Screwpiles: The Forgotten Lighthouses

North Carolina Screwpile Lights The North Carolina screwpile lights helped safeguard and enhance the brisk trade of goods between North Carolina and Virginia. North River Light – 1866 From 1866, the North River Light, also known as the North River Bar Lighthouse, stood on a bar at the entrance to the North River of Albemarle Sound near Old Trap, North Carolina. In 1917, however, ice floes crushed its foundation and the lighthouse was deactivated. In 1929, the Coast Guard sold the structure to the superintendent of the Dare County Schools, who modified and used the building as a school in the Rodanthe-Waves-Salvo community. By 1951, the remodeled building had found new life as the Chicamancomico community center. 23

Cherrystone Bar Light

Cherrystone Bar Light – 1858 Built in 1858, the Cherrystone Bar Light, a hexagonal screwpile lighthouse with a fourth-order Fresnel lens, marked the entrance to the channel of Cape Charles Harbor. Confederate forces attacked the light during the Civil War and Union forces repaired it in 1862. The October 1, 1919, Notice to Mariners announced the light would be discontinued and be replaced with a black skeleton tower on a black caisson in one fathom of water. 22 In October 1920, the hexagonal lighthouse became the only lighthouse to ever be moved to another site to serve as a working navigational aid when it was taken off its screwpile and moved by barge to the Choptank River in Maryland. Killock Shoal Light – 1886 Killock Shoal borders the Chincoteague Channel on the northern end of Virginia’s Eastern Shore. The lighthouse that opened there in 1886 had an unusual one-and-a half-story square-frame screwpile design. An automated light on a steel tower on the original foundation replaced the screwpile lighthouse in 1939.

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