Old Baldy: North Carolina's Oldest Standing Lighthouse
North Carolina
About three miles south of this marker, on Bald Head Island at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, stands Old Baldy, the oldest lighthouse still standing in North Carolina. A first lighthouse went up on the island in the seventeen nineties, but erosion ate away the shoreline and the structure had to be demolished. The replacement, the tower still standing today, was completed on April first, eighteen seventeen, built slightly inland for just under sixteen thousand dollars.
The octagonal brick tower rises one hundred ten feet, its walls covered in stucco that gave it a mottled, distinctive appearance. Old Baldy guided ships in and out of the Cape Fear for over a century before being decommissioned in nineteen thirty-five. It served briefly as a Coast Guard radio beacon in World War Two.
Today it stands as a historic site open to visitors.
