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This Friday, August 7, is National Lighthouse Day. If you’ve ever driven the Parkway toward the shore and caught a glimpse of a striped tower poking up over the dunes, you’ve already got a reason to care about this one. New Jersey isn’t just another state with a few old lighthouses scattered around — we’re home to the oldest one still working in the entire country, plus close to two dozen others strung from Sandy Hook down to Cape May and back up the Delaware Bay side.
Here’s the story behind the holiday, and a rundown of the lighthouses worth building a weekend around.
Where National Lighthouse Day Actually Comes From
The date goes back to August 7, 1789 — the Ninth Act passed by the very First Congress, signed into law by George Washington. That act put lighthouses, beacons, buoys, and public piers under federal control. It’s easy to skim past, but this was the new country’s first real public-works program, and it happened before the Bill of Rights was even ratified.
Fast forward exactly 199 years: in 1988, Congress marked the upcoming bicentennial of the U.S. Lighthouse Service by passing a joint resolution declaring August 7, 1989 as National Lighthouse Day. Senator John Chaffee of Rhode Island sponsored it in the Senate, and Representative William J. Hughes — a New Jersey congressman — carried it through the House. President Reagan signed it into law that November.
Technically, the resolution only applied to that one year, 1989. Nobody ever renewed it. But lighthouse groups around the country kept the tradition going anyway, and thirty-some years later, it’s still the day people show up to climb towers and thank the keepers who used to live in them.
New Jersey has a legitimate claim to being at the center of that story.
Between the approach to New York Harbor, the shipping lanes of Delaware Bay, and a coastline that’s chewed up more ships than most people realize, this state needed reliable lights early — and kept building them for the next 150 years. The Coast Guard has identified roughly two dozen lighthouses here, and a surprising number are still active or open to the public.
The Shore’s Original Landmark: Sandy Hook Lighthouse
Start at the top of the state. Sandy Hook Lighthouse, inside Gateway National Recreation Area, was first lit on June 11, 1764 — more than a decade before the Declaration of Independence. A group of New York merchants tired of losing ships on their way into the harbor petitioned the colonial government, which raised the construction money through a lottery. (Yes, they gambled their way to a lighthouse. Jersey things, sort of, even though it was technically New York’s idea at the time — they even called it the New York Lighthouse.)
The octagonal rubble-stone tower originally stood just a few hundred feet from the tip of the Hook. Littoral drift — sand just quietly moving down the coast over 260 years — has since pushed the shoreline more than a mile out from the tower. It survived British occupation during the Revolution, survived guys trying to blow it up, survived every nor’easter since. An automated third-order Fresnel lens still shines from the top, which makes Sandy Hook the oldest continuously operating lighthouse in the entire United States. It’s also a National Historic Landmark, and you can visit it any day the park is open.
Twin Lights of Navesink: Where America Tested Its First Fresnel Lens
Head a few miles south to the Navesink Highlands and you’ll find the Twin Lights, sitting high enough above Sandy Hook Bay that you can see most of the New York skyline on a clear day. The brownstone towers standing there now — one octagonal, one square — went up in 1862, replacing an earlier station that dated to 1828.
This spot has more “firsts” than almost any lighthouse site in the country. In 1841, Twin Lights became the first place in America to test the Fresnel lens, the prismatic glass technology that let lighthouses throw a far more powerful beam. Then in 1898, the south tower got an enormous electric-arc bivalve lens and became one of the first primary seacoast lights in the U.S. running on electricity — briefly the brightest lighthouse in the country. Guglielmo Marconi also ran early wireless telegraph experiments from the site, so if you’re into the history of radio, this is basically hallowed ground.
The towers stopped serving as the area’s main navigational aid decades ago, but a light still burns in the north tower as a private aid to navigation, and the fortress-like grounds are open for tours as a National Historic Landmark.
Down the Shore: The Lighthouses You’ve Probably Already Seen
Sea Girt Lighthouse (1896) filled what the old Lighthouse Board literally called a “blind spot” — the 38-mile dark stretch of coast between Twin Lights and Barnegat. It was known as Squan Inlet Lighthouse until 1897, before the name changed to match the town. The redbrick Victorian dwelling with its short attached tower doesn’t look like much next to the giants, but it did the job for decades and later pulled watch duty as a lookout during World War II. It’s the only Jersey Shore lighthouse where the lightkeeper’s residence and the tower are literally one building — you can tour the inside.
Barnegat Lighthouse (“Old Barney”) — At roughly 169 feet, this is the 2nd tallest lighthouse on the Jersey Shore. It was designed by General George Meade, the same officer who’d go on to command the Union Army at Gettysburg. The current tower dates to 1859, replacing an earlier, shorter light that erosion was about to swallow. The Coast Guard pulled the light in 1944, and Old Barney sat dark for 65 years — until January 1, 2009, exactly 150 years after it first lit, when local preservationists raised the money for a new Coast Guard-approved lens and got it relit as an official aid to navigation again. Climb the 217 steps at Barnegat Lighthouse State Park and you get one of the best ocean-and-bay views on Long Beach Island.
Absecon Lighthouse in Atlantic City is New Jersey’s tallest at 171 feet, first lit January 15, 1857. It still holds its original first-order Fresnel lens — a 36-plate lens custom-made in Paris — and it’s the only one of its kind still in place anywhere in the state. It was decommissioned in 1933, but the lens is switched on every evening purely so people can see it glow. It once marked the Absecon and Brigantine shoals, a stretch that wrecked more ships than most Jersey drivers would guess.
Hereford Inlet Lighthouse in North Wildwood (1874) looks nothing like a typical lighthouse — it’s a Victorian “Carpenter Gothic” cottage with a short tower tucked into the roofline, surrounded today by gardens. It was designed by Paul J. Pelz, who later became famous for designing the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Built to warn ships off shifting sandbars at the inlet, it went dark for a stretch before being relit in the 1980s and remains an active aid today.
Cape May Lighthouse (1859) at Cape May Point State Park is the third lighthouse built on that spot — the first two were lost to beach erosion, and their exact locations are somewhere underwater now. This one has held on: 157 feet 6 inches tall, 217 steps to the top, still guiding ships at the point where the Atlantic meets Delaware Bay. On a clear day the climb rewards you with views of the Cape May–Lewes Ferry route and, weather depending, the Delaware coastline across the bay.
The Quieter Lights Along Delaware Bay
Not every Jersey lighthouse gets a gift shop and a parking lot. East Point Lighthouse (1849), near where the Maurice River empties into Delaware Bay in Cumberland County, is the second-oldest lighthouse still standing in New Jersey — only Sandy Hook is older.
It got decommissioned in 1941 during a wartime blackout, sat dark for decades, was reactivated by the Coast Guard in 1980, and went through a full restoration in 2017. It’s a working aid to navigation and a small museum run by the Maurice River Historical Society, and its red roof and Cape Cod-style shape make it one of the most photographed lighthouses on the Bayshore.
Further up, the wrought-iron Finns Point Rear Range Light (1877) near Pennsville and the Tinicum Island Rear Range Light upriver once worked as a pair — ship captains lined the two towers up visually to hold a straight course through the shipping channel.
Offshore, a scattering of caisson lighthouses (Brandywine Shoal, Miah Maull Shoal, Ship John Shoal in Delaware Bay, and Robbins Reef, Romer Shoal, and Great Beds in New York Harbor and Raritan Bay) marked channels and shoals for ships approaching from either direction. Robbins Reef, just off Bayonne, is technically a New Jersey light even though it sits closer to Staten Island. Some of these, like Cross Ledge, are down to ruins now; others are still automated and working.
The Keepers Who Made It All Run
Before automation, GPS, and radar, somebody had to physically live at these places — trimming wicks, polishing lenses, winding the clockwork that rotated the light, and staying awake through storms that would keep most people inside with the blinds shut. It wasn’t glamorous work, and it was often lonely, especially at the offshore stations.
Women kept lights too. Katherine “Kate” Walker ran Robbins Reef Light for 33 years after her husband, the previous keeper, died — she’s credited with saving more than 50 lives from a rowboat, all while raising her kids on a tiny island in the middle of the harbor. She’s the name most people bring up first when the topic of lighthouse keepers comes up, and for good reason.
How to Actually Celebrate This Year
The New Jersey Lighthouse Society and local preservation groups keep most of these towers open for climbs, small museums, and events year-round, and several traditionally offer free or discounted admission on National Lighthouse Day itself — worth a call to your nearest one before you drive out.
If you want to make a bigger trip of it, mark your calendar for October 17 and 18, 2026: that’s the weekend of the Lighthouse Challenge of New Jersey, when you can tour multiple lighthouses across the state in a single weekend and get your passport stamped at each stop. It’s become a genuinely fun fall tradition for Jersey families, and it’s a lot easier on the legs than trying to hit all of them in one August afternoon.
From the colonial stonework at Sandy Hook to the Victorian gingerbread at Hereford Inlet to Old Barney’s 217-step climb, New Jersey’s lighthouses are a rare thing: history you can actually walk into. This Friday, or really any clear day this summer, pick one, make the drive, and climb to the top. The same water that built this state’s shipping and immigration history is still right there — and so is the light that kept it safe.
Sources: National Park Service, U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office, U.S. Lighthouse Society, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (State Parks), Absecon Lighthouse, East Point Lighthouse & Museum, Barnegat Lighthouse State Park, Hereford Inlet Lighthouse, Cape May MAC, Lighthouse Challenge of New Jersey.
