Screwpiles: The Forgotten Lighthouses

White Shoal, 1928

Point of Shoals

White Shoal White Shoal Light stood west of Newport News in the James River in Burwells Bay near the mouth of the Pagan River and suffered damage during the Civil War. By 1869, it was listing to one side and declared unsafe. Two years later, the lighthouse was rebuilt as a hexagonal cottage with a fog bell and a sixth-order Fresnel lens. The new, little lighthouse served until 1934, when an automated light replaced its beacon. The structure itself, however, outlasted all the other lighthouses on the James River, surviving until ice carried it away in the 1970s.

Point of Shoals Point of Shoals Lighthouse marked the edge of the last shoal in Burwells Bay, where the narrow channel took a sharp turn to the northeast across the James. Confederates raided the lighthouse during the Civil War. Then, in 1871, after severe ice floe damage, the lighthouse was also rebuilt as a new hexagonal light that marked the shoal for 60 years. Automated in 1932 and deactivated a year later, the structure was dismantled in the 1960s.

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