Hooper Strait Lighthouse
At the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.
The Hooper Strait Lighthouse, now standing on Navy Point, was originally built in 1879 to light the way for boats passing through the shallow, dangerous shoals of Hooper Strait, a thoroughfare for boats bound from the Chesapeake Bay across Tangier Sound to Deals Island or places along the Nanticoke and Wicomico Rivers. As a “screwpile” lighthouse, it is built on special iron pilings which were tipped with a screw that could be turned into the muddy bottom for a depth of 10 feet or more. The Museum’s lighthouse is the second lighthouse constructed at Hooper Strait – the first one was destroyed by ice in 1877.
In the 1960s the Coast Guard had taken to removing the houses from the old screw-pile lights in order to cut maintenance costs and avoid vandalism; a skeleton tower would then be erected on the old foundation. The Hooper Strait Light was slated to be so treated in 1966, but the newly founded Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum arranged with the Historical Society of Talbot County and the federal government to have the light moved to its campus instead. The light was sliced in half at its eaves, and the two pieces of the house were barged to St. Michaels, where they were reassembled on a newly constructed foundation on Navy Point. This was the first successful preservation effort of its kind in the bay, laying a precedent for the removal and preservation of the Drum Point and Seven Foot Knoll lights. The light remains a showpiece of the museum and a landmark on the St. Michaels waterfront.
cbmm.org/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions/hooper-strait-...
The Museum is well worth a visit. Yesterday we met some folks vacationing in the US from the Netherlands- they were fascinated by the lighthouse, if not so much by our heat!
Hooper Strait Lighthouse
At the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.
The Hooper Strait Lighthouse, now standing on Navy Point, was originally built in 1879 to light the way for boats passing through the shallow, dangerous shoals of Hooper Strait, a thoroughfare for boats bound from the Chesapeake Bay across Tangier Sound to Deals Island or places along the Nanticoke and Wicomico Rivers. As a “screwpile” lighthouse, it is built on special iron pilings which were tipped with a screw that could be turned into the muddy bottom for a depth of 10 feet or more. The Museum’s lighthouse is the second lighthouse constructed at Hooper Strait – the first one was destroyed by ice in 1877.
In the 1960s the Coast Guard had taken to removing the houses from the old screw-pile lights in order to cut maintenance costs and avoid vandalism; a skeleton tower would then be erected on the old foundation. The Hooper Strait Light was slated to be so treated in 1966, but the newly founded Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum arranged with the Historical Society of Talbot County and the federal government to have the light moved to its campus instead. The light was sliced in half at its eaves, and the two pieces of the house were barged to St. Michaels, where they were reassembled on a newly constructed foundation on Navy Point. This was the first successful preservation effort of its kind in the bay, laying a precedent for the removal and preservation of the Drum Point and Seven Foot Knoll lights. The light remains a showpiece of the museum and a landmark on the St. Michaels waterfront.
cbmm.org/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions/hooper-strait-...
The Museum is well worth a visit. Yesterday we met some folks vacationing in the US from the Netherlands- they were fascinated by the lighthouse, if not so much by our heat!