Screwpiles: The Forgotten Lighthouses

Newport News Middle Ground Lighthouse

York Spit Lighthouse, 1918

In the late nineteenth century, cast-iron, circular structures began to replace the ice-ravaged wooden screwpile lighthouses. Built in 1891, the Newport News Middle Ground Light, the oldest caisson structure in Virginia waters, helped guide mariners leaving the docks at Newport News. The fourth-order Fresnel light’s height was 35 feet, and the foghorn was a striking bell. Middle Ground Light, automated and refurbished in 1954, underwent conversion to solar power in 1987 with a less powerful channel marker light placed on a pole outside the lantern room. In 2000, after the Monitor-Merrimac Memorial Bridge-Tunnel opened, the lighthouse lens was upgraded, with a white light replacing the red one in the caisson’s lantern room. The caisson, now privately owned, still serves as an aid to navigation, more visible than before to mariners near the bridge-tunnel.

Screwpile Lighthouses on the Western Shore of the Chesapeake Bay For the following brief profiles of lighthouses, we used several sources of information. The primary source was the United States Lighthouse Society webpage. The U.S. Lighthouse Society is constantly updating their website with excellent information, including an increasing number of digitized National Archives records. We also used other sources that are individually credited. York Spit Light – 1870 Lightships first marked the entrance to the York River beginning in 1855. Confederates destroyed the first lightship in 1861. A second lightship was on station from 1863 to 1864. In 1869/70, a screwpile lighthouse, equipped with fender piles to fend off ice and tidal erosion, first exhibited its light. In 1903, 2,000 tons of riprap stone, placed around the pilings, stabilized the station.

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