Aging Beauty Sandy Hook Lighthouse
by Joan Carroll
Title
Aging Beauty Sandy Hook Lighthouse
Artist
Joan Carroll
Medium
Photograph - Digital Art
Description
Sandy Hook Lighthouse is part of the Sandy Hook Unit of Gateway National Recreation Area administered by the National Park Service. As such, it suffered closure during the infamous government shutdown in October 2013. Lucky for me, the government shutdown ended while I was in NJ and I was able to visit. It was an impossibly sunny and blue sky day, just perfect. The Sandy Hook Lighthouse is the oldest working lighthouse in the United States. It was designed and built in 1764 by Isaac Conro. At that time, it stood only 500 feet from the tip of Sandy Hook; however, today, due to growth caused by littoral drift, it is almost one and a half miles inland from the tip. The light was built to aid mariners entering the southern end of the New York Harbor. It was originally called New York Lighthouse because it was funded through a New York Assembly lottery and a tax on all ships entering the Port of New York. The lighthouse has endured an attempt to destroy it as an aid to British navigation by Benjamin Tupper, and a subsequent occupancy of British soldiers during the Revolutionary War. Almost two years after the State of New York ratified the U.S. Constitution, the lighthouse was transferred to federal authority. George Washington wrote to the Senate on April 5, 1790, "I have directed my private secretary to lay before you copies of three acts of the legislature of New York ... An act for vesting in the United States of America the light-house and the lands thereunto belonging at Sandy Hook". The Sandy Hook lighthouse became the first lighthouse in the country to be lit by electric incandescent lamps in 1889. In 1964, the lighthouse celebrated its 200th Anniversary. At a ceremony celebrating this event, Walter I. Pozen, a New Jersey native and assistant to the Secretary of the Interior dedicated the lighthouse as a National Historic Landmark. The lighthouse is still in active operation and is equipped with a 3rd order Fresnel lens illuminated by a 1000 watt bulb, and emitting 45,000 candle-power. It is visible 19 miles at sea. In 1996, the ownership of the lighthouse was transferred from the Coast Guard to the National Park Service.
FEATURED PHOTO, 1 All Artwork group, 10/27/15
FEATURED PHOTO, The Road To Self Promotion group, 10/25/15
Uploaded
October 25th, 2015
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Viewed 4,430 Times - Last Visitor from New York, NY on 04/23/2024 at 3:41 AM
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