The current Bodie Island Lighthouse is the third found near Bodie Island in the Outer Banks in Carolina of the North and was built in 1872. It has a height of 156 feet (48 m) and is located on the Roanoke Sound side of the first island to be part of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore. The lighthouse is south of Nags Head, a few miles before Oregon Inlet. It was renovated from August 2009 to March 2013, and the public made it scalable. 214 steps spiral up to the top. The 170-foot structure is one of only a dozen tall brick tower lighthouses left in the United States and one of the few with a first-rate original Fresnel lens to project its light.
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| Bodie Island Lighthouse |
History
The earlier Bodie Island lighthouses were actually located south of the Oregon Inlet on Pea Island in an area that is now underwater due to southbound migration from the inlet. The first was built in 1847 and then abandoned in 1859 due to a poor foundation. The second, built in 1859, was destroyed in 1861 by troops allied in retreat who feared it was used as a lookout in the Union during the Civil War. The third and current lighthouse, with its original first-rate Fresnel lens, was completed in 1872.
This lighthouse was built further north and inland on a 15-acre site. In 1932, the Bodie Island Lighthouse was automated (and the light was turned into an electric lamp through the use of oil-fired electric generators ), and in 1953 it was transferred to the care of the National Park Service. It remained manned until 1940 when the lighthouse was fully automated. In 1953, the generators were disconnected and power was supplied from the commercial electrical grid.
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| Bodie Island Lighthouse |
While some people (including non-Outer Banks North Carolinians) pronounce the name with a long "o" sound, it is traditionally pronounced as a body. Folklore leads you to believe that it is due to the number of dead sailors who were washed ashore by sunken ships along this part of the East Coast, which has long been known as the Cemetery of the Atlantic, but that is not true.
The name is actually derived from the original name of the area, which was "Bodie Island" in honor of the Body family, who once owned the land that was a separate barrier island before 1811 when the Inlet of Roanoke that separated it from the Currituck Banks to the north. closed. Local gift shops sell maps of the shipwrecks on the ocean floor. An impressive variety of ships have sunk due to storms, sandbars, and German submarines during World War I and World War II. This lighthouse appears in the background of the Federal Duck Seal of 1963-1964.
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| Bodie Island Lighthouse |
After years of fundraising and procrastination, work to restore the cast iron and other parts that needed work began on the lighthouse in August 2009. As of March 2010, the exterior scaffold was 100% complete while the scaffold interior was 50% finished. The restoration was halted in the spring of 2011 after major new structural integrity issues were found in many of the main support beams below the balcony.
The additional repairs required were too expensive to complete in the original restoration project. In August 2011, Hurricane Irene blew away part of the glass in the newly restored lantern room and tore off a protective shroud that covered the lantern room. The flooding caused buckling of the floors in the double guard rooms of the Bodie Island Light Station. Additional funding was obtained to continue the restoration, which was restarted in 2012 and completed in March 2013. There was a relighting ceremony on April 18, 2013, and the lighthouse was opened for the public to generally go up the next day for a fee.