The Lighthouse Directory

Welcome to the Lighthouse Directory, providing information and links for more than 24,800 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 November 7, 2026.

This week the pages for West Kherson in Occupied Ukraine, Sarawak in Malaysia, Brunei, the Pechenga Area in Murmansk Oblast of Russia, the Southern Wando Islands in Jeollanam Province of South Korea, Northwestern Luzon in the Philippines, the Azores Islands in Portugal, Western Poland (the Odra River), Mediterranean Egypt, the state of Andhra Pradesh in India, Saskatchewan and Alberta in Canada, Georgia in the U.S.A., the state of São Paulo in Brazil, New Caledonia, the Romsdal District in Møre og Ramsdal County of Norway, and Western Yamaguchi Prefecture in Japan 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 recent photos of the Thorngumbald Range Lighthouses in England and to Jim Smith for comments on last week's revisions.

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

 

Ponta do Arnel Light, São Miguel, Azores, Portugal, March 2023
Instagram photo by João Irineu

A Month of Lighthouse News:.

  • November 11. In Saipan, Northern Marianas, the Marianas Visitors Authority has taken possession of the Japanese-built 1934 Garapan Lighthouse for its new headquarters. This assures continued maintenance of this historic lighthouse, the westernmost U.S. lighthouse.
  • November 11. There is a troubling report that Iran attacked Oman's 1914 Didamar Island Lighthouse in the Strait of Hormuz, but an Omani source says the lighthouse has not been damaged.
  • November 8. As it has every year since 1985, the Split Rock Lighthouse in Minnesota will light its historic 3rd order lens on Tuesday, November 10, the anniversary of the loss in 1975 of the ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald with all its crew.
  • November 7. Monday's fire gutted the interior of the gift shop at the Two Harbors Lighthouse in Minnesota. The gift shop was housed in the 1892 fog signal building, a historic structure. The Lake County Historical Society pledges a complete restoration.
  • Noivember 7. The 1917 Diamond Head Lighthouse in Honolulu, Hawaii, remains wrapped in scaffolding, but the Coast Guard says its $3.7 million restoration project should be completed by April.
  • November 4. In northwest England the 1839 Whitehaven West Pier Lighthouse is out of service after winter Storm Boelo ripped out its power cable.
  • November 4. The Harbor of Refuge Lighthouse at Lewes, Delaware, celebrates its 100th anniversary this month, but due to Corps of Engineers restrictions the anniversary cruise is postponed to June of next year.
  • November 3. A fire has heavily damaged the gift shop of the Two Harbors Lighthouse in Minnesota. The gift shop is in a separate building and the lighthouse itself was not damaged.
  • November 3. The National Park Service is starting a four-month project to repair and restore the boardwalk and observation platform at the Bodie Island Lighthouse near Nags Head, North Carolina.
  • November 2. Cutbacks of federal funding for the National Park Service have prevented repair of damage to the base of the Fire Island Lighthouse in Long Island, New York. A storm in March 2023 removed a large section of the concrete coating that protects the bricks of the tower.
  • October 29. In Rhode Island the General Services Administration is selling the 1932 Warwick Neck Lighthouse and its keeper's house in an auction. The current bid is $1,120,000 and bidding closes Nov. 17. The City of Warwick failed in earlier efforts to acquire the lighthouse.
  • October 29. In western England the Somerset County Council pledges it will carry out repairs to the wooden 1832 Burnham-on-Sea Low Lighthouse. Repairs needed include rusting metalwork, damage to one of the legs and paint peeling away.
  • October 27. The Biloxi Lighthouse in Mississippi has reopened to the public after aa two-month, $52,000 restoration project.
  • October 26. The privately-built Channel Point Lighthouse in Hyannis, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, is for sale, along with the house on the property, for $3.295 million.
  • October 24. The Hiawatha National Forest and volunteers from HistoriCorps have finished a project to stabilize the foundation of the Grand Island East Channel Lighthouse near Munising, Upper Michigan. More extensive repair work is planned for 2027.
  • October 21. In New York City the Landmarks Preservation Commission has begun action to provide landmark protection for the 1890 Coney Island Lighthouse. The landmark designation would protect the lighthouse from alteration or removal and it might lead to public access.
  • October 21. The Thacher & Straitsmouth Islands Association has launched a fund drive for $600,000 needed to complete funding for a $2.25 million restoration of the lantern room of the 1861 Thatcher Island South Lighthouse near Rockport, Massachusetts.
  • October 20. Restored by years of volunteer effort, the 1905 Eldred Rock Lighthouse, Alaska's oldest surviving lighthouse, has closed its first summer of group tours and overnight rentals. Repair and renovation work has also continued.
  • October 20. More Alaska news: members of the Five Finger Lighthouse Society teamed up with NOAA technicians to put the weather station on the 1935 Five Finger Islands Lighthouse back in service. The weather station and its tower had failed in July.
  • October 19. In South Carolina the Save the Light preservation group holds a birthday celebration for the 150th anniversary of the Morris Island Lighthouse near Charleston.
  • October 18. In the Cayman Islands the Cayman Brac Lighthouse, on the easternmost island of the country, is back in service after residents were quick to report the outage. (news video)
  • October 16. The Hartford Current has details of the management plan for the Lynde Point Lighthouse in Connecticut, assuming it is transferred, as recommended by the National Park Service, to the Borough of Fenwick.
  • October 14. In New Jersey Cumberland County now controls the East Point Lighthouse and plans to reopen it, but the Maurice River Historical Society, which saved and restored the lighthouse and has 27 years experience managing it, has not been asked to help. This makes no sense.


Domańce Range Rear Light, Czaoliniec, Poland, October 2024
Google Maps street view

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.


1869 Port Said Light, Port Said, Egypt, November 2021
Google Maps photo by Sherief Abd Elrahman

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.


Dolphin's Nose Light, Vishakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India, July 2024
Instagram photo by Joel Lava

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.


Sylvan Lake Light, Sylvan Lake, Alberta, Canada, August 2023
Google Maps photo by Rob Monahan


Tybee Island Light, Tybee Island, Georgia, U.S.A., March 2024
Instagram photo by Tybee Island Light Station

Articles about lighthouses:

Online Light Lists

Online Navigation Charts

Special Resources


Ponta do Boi Light, Ilhabela, São Paulo, Brazil, August 2026
Google Maps photo by Gabriel Limoeiro


Phare Amédée, Le Mont-Dore, New Caledonia, March 2025
Instagram photo by Aircalin


Ona Light and Bifyr, Sandøy, Møre og Romsdal, Norway, June 2023
Instagram photo by Ona Fyr


Tsuno Shima Light, Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi, Japan, August 2024
Instagram photo by todai_oshiro

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.


Stanislaus-Adzhyholskyy Range Front Light, Kherson, Ukraine, March 2019
Google Maps photo by Dmitry N


Tanjung Po Light, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia
photo by Ezmil Sahrani courtesy of Greenfinder.asia


Vaidagubskiy Light, Rybachiy Peninsula, Murmansk, Russia, October 2026
Instagrams photo by Vodnik Tourist Club


Dangsado Light, Soan District, Wando County, South Korea, July 2021
Google Maps photo by J.G. Jeon


Cape Bojeador Light, Ilocos Norte, Philippines, August 2025
Google Maps photo by Patrick A.


Lumut Light, Lumut, Brunei, January 2024
Google Maps photo by Yu Chu Chin


Cochin Light, Cochin, Saskatchewan, Canada, February 2024
Google Maps photo by Sam Pyo


Saint Simons Island Light, Saint Simons, Georgia, U.S.A., June 2022
Google Maps photo by Sam J
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, Arctic, and Western Canada

Bermuda and the West Indies

Mexico

Central America

Brazil (listed north to south)

South America (except Brazil)

South Atlantic Ocean and Antarctica

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

Pacific Islands

New Zealand

Australia

Indian Ocean

Africa

Lighthouses of Europe

Britain and Ireland

France and Monaco

Portugal

Spain and Gibraltar

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

South and Southeast Asia

Philippines

Indonesia

China and Taiwan

Korea (listed clockwise around the peninsula)

Japan (listed clockwise around the main islands)

Asiatic Russia

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 2026 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.