The Move

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.

Due to proper planning and execution, both of the aforementioned moves were successful.