You may have noticed, I haven’t posted my blog for several
weeks. My wife and I were busy preparing for the move to our new home. We sorted items from closets, drawers, pictures, dishes, furniture, and tools deciding
what items to take with us and those items for an estate sale. Then, packing the
chosen items and moving the boxes before professional movers came to move our
furniture. For anyone who has moved, you know a lot of preparation, time, and
work goes into the move.
By now, you may be asking yourself, “what has this got to do
with his lighthouse blog.” During preparation
to move our belongings, I thought about the enormous task engineers and workers
have to go through to move a lighthouse. Much more complicated than our move. This
reflection took me back to a lighthouse I visited in North Carolina shortly
after it was moved to its new location.
It’s the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse located on Cape Hatteras
National Seashore, Outer Banks of NC. Due to shoreline erosion, this lighthouse was relocated 2900-feet
inland during the summer of 1999. I was able to see a time elapsed movie of that
very slow and difficult move. It was amazing to see how workers moved that huge
towering lighthouse without allowing it to topple. At the time of my visit here
in June 2000, the lighthouse was again open to the public. However, the keeper's
quarters, which houses a museum, exhibit area and gift shop, was not yet open
to the public. Some work was still in progress as a result of moving the
lighthouse. One example is the orange fence around a portion of the lighthouse
and the graded landscape in the foreground of my picture.
The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is built of brick and construction was completed in 1870. It towers 208-feet above the sand and is
the tallest lighthouse in the U.S. Its distinctive day-mark of four spirals,
two black and two white, extend around the tower one and a half times. This
marking was first applied in 1873. A duplex airport beacon now provides the
signal light. This is an active light and operates daily from dusk to dawn.
