New Point Comfort Lighthouse, date unknown, possibly late 1800’s

The New Point Comfort Lighthouse is on an island off the southern tip of Mathews County. It’s the 3rd oldest lighthouse surviving in the Bay, the 10th oldest in the Country, and it’s on the National Register of Historic Places. Efforts are underway to preserve it for the future. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Archives.)

There’s a great video and a lot of information here: http://www.newpointcomfortlighthouse.org/

There’s also a concise and well-written history on the Lighthouse Digest site:  http://www.lhdigest.com/Digest/StoryPage.cfm?StoryKey=2304

Photo on Ten Mile Hill shows the effect of liquifaction where the intense shaking caused the water to rise and mix with the sand, forming a craterlet with puddled water at the bottom after the shaking stopped.

The lighthouse was completed in 1804, and has survived a number of storms, the War of 1812, and the Charleston Earthquake of August 31, 1886, which shook seven states from South Carolina to New York. Aftershocks  continued for days afterwards, but the lighthouse withstood them all.

(Photo courtesy of U.S. Geological Survey; Photo by C.C. Jones, September 1886. Plate 20, U.S. Geological Survey Annual Report 9, 1887-88)

Currently, the lighthouse is being used as an example of the imminent danger from sea level rise caused by global warming. My next post is going to show why that’s not quite the case.