When I was in high school we had a work study program for Seniors. My job was working at the visitor center and I was lucky enough to be able to go and open the lighthouse 3 days a week from 2 pm to 3 pm for visitors to be able to come inside and take a look up inside, feel the walls and ask questions. It was one of my favorite jobs.

On May 7, 1822, Congress set aside $20,000 for a lighthouse on Ocracoke Island, and the federal government shortly thereafter purchased two acres of land for $50 and commissioned Noah Porter of Massachusetts to build a tower and keeper’s cottage. The lighthouse was to be coated with an unlikely formula of lime, salt, ground rice, whiting, and clear glue, which was mixed with boiling water and applied to the bricks while hot. The lighthouse was completed the next year, for $11,359, considerably less than the sum the government had budgeted.

In 1849, the lighthouse was equipped with a new lantern room and lighting apparatus, which consisted of ten brass lamps and twenty-one-inch reflectors instead of the fifteen that had been used before. The apparatus revolved every two minutes to produce a flashing light. The characteristic of the light was changed to fixed white in 1854 through the installation of a fourth-order fresnel lens.

The lighthouse survived the Civil War with minimal damage; Confederate troops dismantled the fourth-order Fresnel lens in 1862, but Union forces re-installed it the following year. Originally an oil-burning light, the Ocracoke light was electrified in the early decades of the 1900s. The present light is equal to 8,000 candlepower and casts a stationary beam that can be seen 14 miles at sea. A battery powered back-up light operates during power failures.

The lighthouse stands 75 feet tall and tapers from a diameter of 25 feet at the base to 12 feet at the top. The tower’s solid brick walls are 5 feet thick at the bottom and 2 feet thick at the top. There are 86 steps to the top. The lighthouse is the oldest operating in NC and the second oldest in NC. It is also the second oldest operating in the US, Sandy Hook, NJ being the first oldest still operating.

The lighthouse is closed for climbing due to its fragile structure but you can visit the grounds.