The Lighthouse Directory

Welcome to the Lighthouse Directory, providing information and links for more than 24,600 of the world's lighthouses. Follow the Directory's new Bluesky feed (@lhdirectory.bsky.social) for the latest in lighthouse news and Directory updates. Latest update September 13, 2025.

This week the pages for Southwest Ireland, Southern Portugal, Eastern Latvia, Sri Lanka, Southwestern Ontario (Lake Erie) in Canada, North Carolina in the U.S.A., Paraguay, Uruguay, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Hitra and Frøya in Trondelag County of Norway, the Amakusa Islands in Kumamoto Prefecture in Japan, the Sea of Azov coast of Occupied Ukraine, the mainland regencies of Southeast Sulawesi in Indonesia, Magadan in Russia, and the Okdo Islands of Gunsan City in South Korea have been checked and revised with improved information and many new photos.

Also in the Directory: A Checklist of Lightships in the world. Included are some 127 ships surviving, restored, abandoned, or recently scrapped.

Special thanks this week to Andreas Köhler for updates concerning lighthouses in northern Iceland and to Michael Ellison for a historic postcard showing the temporary lighthouse at Bull Point in Devon county England..

GOOGLE SITE SEARCH (of ibiblio.org; include the word "lighthouse" in your search)

 


Daugavgrīva Light, Rīga, Latvia, July 2024
Instagram photo by Aleksandrs Petruhins

A Month of Lighthouse News:

  • September 13. A project to raise the flood-threatened keeper's house of the Ocracoke Lighthouse in North Carolina has been on pause after workers found cisterns and live oak roots underground. A revised plan is set to be released soon so work can resume.
  • September 9. After 18 years of inaction, Michael Gabriel, owner of the Fourteen Foot Bank Lighthouse, reappears in Delaware with some plans for restoration.
  • September 8. Once-a-year tour of the Grosse Ile Lighthouse in the Detroit River, Michigan, is set for Sunday, September 14.
  • September 8. The Gibbs Hill Lighthouse in Bermuda is out of service for repairs to its electrical system, damaged by what is thought to have been a lightning strike.
  • September 7. The Fish and Wildlife Service is beginning repairs to the lantern room of the Kīlauea Point Lighthouse in Kauai, Hawaii. Repairs will include removal and cleaning of the Fresnel lens, weatherproofing of the lantern room glass, and restoration of the vent ball.
  • September 7. A day of celebration is planned for Wednesday, September 10, to mark the 200th anniversary of the very popular Owls Head Lighthouse on the central coast of Maine.
  • September 6. Restoration of the Eldred Rock Lighthouse, Alaska's oldest, is nearly complete as the restoration season ends. The Eldred Rock Lighthouse Preservation Association hopes to open he lighthouse to the public next summer.
  • September 6. The government of the Cayman Islands has purchased 125 acres of land surrounding the Cayman Brac Lighthouse. Cayman Brac is the easternmost, smallest, and highest of the three Cayman Islands.
  • September 5. The Penfield Reef Lighthouse in Connecticut sells at auction for #370,000. The buyer is not known.
  • September 5. The Charlevoix Historical Society in Michigan has hired a contractor to repair and repaint the exterior and interior of the Charlevoix South Pier Lighthouse. The pier and lighthouse will be closed through mid October.
  • September 4. The very popular Fanad Head Lighthouse in County Donegal, northwestern Ireland, is holding an open house Friday, September 11, to inaugurate a new café and community hub added to the amenities of the light station.
  • September 3. Construction at a nearby boat access site will limit access to the Menominee North Pierhead Lighthouse in Upper Michigan until December.
  • September 2. A man jumped to his death from the gallery of the Fire Island Lighthouse in New York on Friday. Meanwhile the Gibbs Hill Lighthouse in Bermuda is installing a safety railing this month to prevent such suicides; one happened there in January.
  • September 1. The Lorain Lighthouse in Ohio is the setting for a new film, "Beneath the Light," premiering in Lorain on Friday, September 6.
  • August 29. The Cape Agulhas Lighthouse in South Africa has reopened after a month of repairs to damage caused by a lightning strike last year. This historic lighthouse marks the southernmost tip of the African continent.
  • August 29. The Town of Souris, Prince Edward Island, has commissioned artists to create a four-panel mural to feature the town's history and partially block the view of the town's wastewater lagoon from the popular Souris East Lighthouse.
  • August 28. As shrouds are removed, the new white paint on the Port Washington Breakwater Lighthouse in Wisconsin is revealed. Scaffolding remains in place to allow some work on the concrete base, but the restoration project should be complete by late October.
  • Aigust 28. The General Services Administration has rejected an offer from the City of Warwick, Rhode Island, to take ownership of the Warwick Neck Lighthouse. The lighthouse will be sold at auction, as previously announced.
  • August 27. A new preservation group is working to restore the historic keeper's house of the former Slip Point Lighthouse at Clallam Bay in the far northwest of Washington state.
  • August 24. A permit has been filed for a project to address erosion of the bluff at the Pemaquid Point Lighthouse in Maine, one of Maine's top tourist attractions.
  • August 24. The State of Michigan provided $800,000 to restore the Muskegon South Breakwater Lighthouse, and now volunteers are seeking the same amount locally to complete funding for the project. Work should begin by the end of the year.
  • August 23. More news from Duluth, Minnesota: The St. Paul-based preservation group Rethos has taken ownership of the Duluth Harbor North Breakwater Lighthouse. They expect to begin cleanup immediately and hope to open the lighthouse for tours after several years of restoration.
  • August 22. The General Services Administration announces it will auction the Warwick Neck Lighthouse in Rhode Island. The mayor of Warwick says he wants the city to take ownership, although the city failed to take that action when the lighthouse was available under NHLPA.
  • August 20. The Lake Superior Marine Museum Association has taken ownership of the Duluth South Breakwater Outer Lighthouse in Minnesota and is beginning to clean up the building and plan a restoration. The goal is to have the lighthouse open for tours by 2027.
  • August 19. On the Greek island of Tinos, the Friends of Livada Lighthouse Group is working to restore the island's three lighthouses, Livada, Planitis, and Disvato. This is something new for Greece, strong local support for lighthouse restoration.
  • August 18. In Scotland's far north the Shetland Amenity Trust has placed the Bressay Lighthouse and its three keeper's cottages for sale for £350,000. The Trust formerly provided overnight accommodations here but can't afford the restoration the buildings now need.
  • August 18. The City of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, is considering whether it can afford to seek ownership of the 1905 Sheboygan Breakwater Lighthouse, now available for transfer under the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act.
  • August 18. The Hillsboro Lighthouse Preservation Society is kicking off a drive to raise at least $1 million for a restoration of the Hillsboro Inlet Lighthouse in Florida.
  • August 17. Volunteers from places as far away as Saskatchewan and North Carolina are coming for a three-week work party repairing the Peter Island Lighthouse in Nova Scotia.
  • August 16. Teams from the San Juan Islands Youth Conservation Corps replace windows and carry out needed repairs at the Patos Island Lighthouse in northwestern Washington.
  • August 15. The Cana Island Lighthouse in Wisconsin, battered by recent storms, has reopened to visitors while cleanup of damage on the island continues.
  • August 14. The annual fish fry dinner fundraiser for the Ashtabula Lighthouse in Ohio will be this Saturday, August 16. Volunteers have worked for years and made progress on restoring this 1905 lighthouse, but more work is needed.
  • August 14. Also this Saturday, August 16, ceremonies and activities will mark the 135th anniversary of the Cape Meares Lighthouse in Oregon.
  • August 13. The online auction of the Penfield Reef Lighthouse in Connecticut has been extended to next Wednesday, August 20. One bid, at the $100,000 minimum, has bee received.
  • August 13. n a foggy dawn operation a crane has returned the lantern of the Yaquina Bay Lighthouse in Oregon to its place atop the building.
  • August 12. Severe storms in Wisconsin flood the surroundings of the Cana Island Lighthouse, blowing down 30% of the island's trees and stranding staff and visitors on the island.


Dondra Head Light, Dondra, Sri Lanka, une 2024
Instagram photo by Okiem Turystki

About this site
Founded in 1999 (during the relocation of North Carolina's Cape Hatteras lighthouse), the Lighthouse Directory is a tool for research and study concerning lighthouses and efforts to preserve those lighthouses. The Directory provides a brief compilation of basic data for each lighthouse with links to other reliable information available on the Internet. Since the addition of the Hainan page in February 2009 listings cover the entire world. However, this doesn't mean the Directory is complete, because new information continues to come to light.

I'm glad to hear from site visitors, especially if you have lighthouse news or photos of rarely-visited lighthouses.

The Directory has over 30,000 links, and all of them were appropriate and legitimate when they were added. Occasionally, because a web site is hacked or a URL is captured, a link leads not to legitimate information but to an inappropriate site, such as a source of pornography or malicious software. Please let me know if this happens, and I will remove the offending link immediately.

This site is hosted by ibiblio.org, one of the largest free information databases online, maintained as a public service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.


Point Abino Light, Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada, June 2018
Flickr Creative Commons photo
by Amr Younis

Definitions: What is a lighthouse?
To begin with some basics, an aid to navigation or navaid is a structure placed on or near navigable water to provide visual guidance to mariners. A beacon is an aid to navigation that is fixed in place (that is, not floating). A lighted beacon or lightbeacon is a beacon displaying a light, while an unlit beacon is called a daybeacon. Often, a lighted beacon is simply called a light.

Everyone agrees that a lighthouse is a lightbeacon that is, in some sense, a substantial building. There is some diagreement among lighthouse fans as to whether there should be restrictions on the design of the building, but standard dictionaries in English all have some form of this simple definition: "A lighthouse is a tower carrying a light to guide mariners." Indeed, in many languages the word for a lighthouse translates literally as "light tower" or "fire tower." The Directory adopts this definition: a lighthouse is a tower, at least 4 m (13 ft) tall and more substantial in cross section than a post, mast, or pillar, carrying or designed originally to carry a light to guide mariners.

Many lighthouses are enclosed buildings with walls of stone, brick, wood, concrete, metal, or modern composite materials. Many others are open skeletal (framework) towers of cast iron, steel, or wood. The light at the top of some lighthouses is housed in an enclosed lantern, but many lighthouses have the light exposed with no lantern. Historically lighthouses were powered with a variety of fuels, but today nearly all are solar powered.

The Directory includes listings of certain lights and other sites of interest to lighthouse fans that aren't lighthouses by this definition. The titles of those listings are enclosed in square brackets [...]. In addition, lighthouses destroyed or demolished since 2000 continue to be listed; their names are preceded by the hashtag #.

A light station is a collection of buildings including a lighthouse, staff quarters, and supporting structures such as a fog signal building housing a foghorn or fogbell, a boathouse, an oil house to store fuel for the light, and so on. A century ago all lighthouses required lightkeepers to maintain and operate the light, fog signal, and other equipment. Today practically all aids to navigation operate automatically, but some light stations have resident caretakers, still called keepers, to maintain the property and guard against vandalism.


Bodie Island Light, Nags Head, North Carolina, U.S.A., August 2024
Instagram photo by Surfing with Brooke

The lighthouse listings
Dates shown for lighthouses are the dates when the light was first displayed; this may be later than the construction date in some cases. A station establishment date, when listed, is the date when a light was first displayed at or near the same location. Data concerning the characteristics (colors and flash patterns) of lights comes mostly from the U.S. Coast Guard Light List for U.S. lighthouses and from the U.S. NGA List of Lights or available national light lists for lighthouses in other countries.

The focal plane height of a light is the height above the surface of the water at which the light is displayed. (The level of the water surface is usually "mean high water," the level at an average high tide.) In the listings, "focal plane" refers to the focal plane height. A lantern of a lighthouse is a room or structure that actually encloses the light.

The tower heights of the lighthouses themselves should be considered approximate. Different sources use different methods for measuring tower heights, and those heights may actually change due to changes in ground level at the base of the tower.

I have attempted to determine whether lighthouse sites and towers are open to the public. This information is inferred from whatever sources may be available; it is certainly not guaranteed. Please let me know if this information, or any information in the Directory, is incorrect.

Lighthouse listings are marked with ratings of zero to four stars based on the extent to which the light station is open to visitors. Check the ratings key to interpret these ratings.


Punta Brava Light, Montevideo, Uruguay, January 2023
Instagram photo by Celeste Torres


Sapuk Light, Weno, Chuuk State, Micronesia, September 2018
Google Maps photo by Edward Quintero

Articles about lighthouses:

Online Light Lists

Online Navigation Charts

Special Resources


Sletringen Light, Frøya, Trondelag, Norway, August 2021
Google Maps photo by Martin Sand


Yu Shima Light, Kami-Amakusa, Kumamoto, Japan, September 2023
Google Maps photo by Edwin Wang


Berdyansk Verkhniy Light, Berdyansk, Occupied Ukraine, September 2021
Google Maps photo by J D


Pulau Dehaan Light, Konawe Utara, Southeast Suawesi, Indonesia, August 2020
Google Maps drone view by Bambang Yutriono

Regional, state, and local lighthouse preservation organizations are recognized on each U.S. state page. U.S. organizations interested in lighthouse preservation nationally are:

  • The American Lighthouse Foundation, based in Rockland, Maine. ALF encourages preservation efforts throughout the country and holds preservation leases on more than a dozen New England lighthouses.
  • The United States Lighthouse Society, formerly based in San Francisco, has moved to the Point No Point Lighthouse in Hansville, Washington. USLHS has chapters active in the Chesapeake area, Long Island, Oregon, and Washington, and has been active in supporting preservation in other areas as well. The Society also publishes a respected journal, The Keeper's Log, and has a large collection of historic light lists of U.S. lighthouses.

Lighthouses on the Internet: A Researcher's Guide has replaced the list of links formerly on this page.


Mys Chirikova Light, Magadan, Russia, March 2012
Google Maps photo by Mikhail Y


Eucheongdo (Ochongdo) Light, Okdo, Gunsan, South Korea, August 2021
Google Maps photo by SangHo Park

Fastnet Light, Celtic Sea, Ireland, July 2024
ex-Instagram photo by devonbybikeboatboots


Vila Real de Santo António Light, Portugal, August 2023
Instagram photo
by Casimiro Fernandes


Castillo El Peñon Light, Villa Hayes, Paraguay, May 2022
Google Maps photo by Benoit Briol


Kwajalein Light, Kwajalein, Marshall Islands, June 2019
Google Maps photo by Scott Masingill


Old Head of Kinsale Light, Old Head, County Cork, Ireland, May 2023
Instagram photo by Alan Boyers

Lighthouses of the Americas

Northeastern United States

Southeastern United States and U.S. Caribbean

Midwestern United States

Western United States and U.S. Pacific Territories

Atlantic Canada and St. Pierre

Interior and Western Canada

Bermuda and the West Indies

Mexico

Central America

South America, Antarctica, South Atlantic Ocean

Lighthouses of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, Australia, and Africa

New Zealand and Pacific Islands

Australia

Indian Ocean

Africa

Lighthouses of Europe

Britain and Ireland

France and Monaco

Spain and Portugal

Italy and Malta

Southeastern Europe

Southwestern Russia and Ukraine

Belgium and Netherlands

 

Germany

Inland Central Europe

Denmark, Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland

Norway (listed south to north)

Sweden (listed south to north)

Poland and the Baltic States

Finland

Northwestern Russia (listed southwest to northeast)

Lighthouses of Asia

Mediterranean Sea, Black Sea and Caspian Sea

Arabia, Iran and Pakistan

India

Southeast Asia

Philippines

Indonesia

China and Taiwan

Korea (listed clockwise around the peninsula)

Japan (listed clockwise around the main islands)

Asiatic Russia


Currituck Beach Light, Corolla, North Carolina, U.S.A., August 2024
Instagram photo by Dennis Hoerner

Thanks to:

Hundreds of lighthouse fans around the world have enriched this site with their assistance, information, suggestions, and corrections. For a long time I tried to maintain a list of these many friends and contacts, but it has grown too long (and too out of date) to display here. However, I must recognize the late Michel Forand for his suggestions and corrections touching essentially every page of this work, and extend thanks to Jeremy D'Entremont, Ted Sarah, Klaus Huelse, and Andreas Köhler, who have followed the development of the Directory for years. More recently Jim Smith has read nearly every page carefully, correcting errors and suggesting useful additions. Each of them has contributed information and support in vital ways, and the Directory would be much less useful without their participation.

In addition to Michel Forand, I want to recognize the contributions of two other experts on lighthouse history who have passed in recent years: Terry Pepper, the Executive Director of the Great Lakes Lighthouse Keepers Association (GLLKA), and Tim Harrison, the founding editor of Lighthouse Digest magazine. Both made useful and supportive comments on the Directory.

Formalities

Written by:

Russ Rowlett, Retired Adjunct Professor of Mathematics and Professor of Education
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

You are welcome to email the author (rowlett@email.unc.edu) with comments and suggestions.

All material in The Lighthouse Directory is copyright 2025 by Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Many images are presented by permission of their copyright holders, as noted under the image.

Permission is granted to copy portions of the Directory for personal use and study, but all other rights are reserved. You are welcome to make links to this page or to any page of the Directory, provided you credit the source and do not present the work as your own.

Please do not copy the contents of any page of the Directory to another site. This is an infringement of copyright, and it also deprives your users of the benefit of improvements and corrections made to the page. Everyone has permission to link to this page or to any page of the Directory.

The information contained in the directory is as accurate as I can make it; please notify me if you find any errors. Neither the author nor the University of North Carolina assumes any liability for uses made of the information presented by this web site.