The Candy-Striped Assateague Lighthouse

Rising out of the pines on the southern end of Assateague Island stands a tower painted in bold red and white bands, like a stick of peppermint candy. This is the Assateague Lighthouse, and it has been warning ships off these dangerous shoals for the better part of two centuries. The first lighthouse here went up in eighteen thirty three, but it was too short and too weak to do the job, and mariners kept wrecking on the sandbars offshore.

So the government built the tower you see today. It went into service on the first of October, eighteen sixty seven. It stands one hundred forty two feet tall and once held a first order Fresnel lens, the largest and most powerful class of lighthouse lens ever made, a beehive of hand ground glass prisms.

That original lens is now on display at the island museum. The distinctive red and white stripe pattern was applied by the Coast Guard in the nineteen sixties. The light was electrified in the nineteen thirties, which eventually ended the need for keepers to live at its base.

Today the lighthouse sits within the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, it is owned by the Fish and Wildlife Service, and it remains an active aid to navigation still maintained by the Coast Guard. Climb the spiral iron staircase and the whole barrier island unrolls beneath you.