Because of the mounting number of shipwrecks off this section of North Carolina’s outer banks, in 1837 the federal government sent the impressively named Lieutenant Napoleon L. Coste to determine the best location for another lighthouse. He suggested that a light 35 miles north of Cape Hatteras, on or near Bodie Island, would allow south-bound ships to fix their positions for navigating the menacing Cape.

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Although Congress immediately agreed, the construction of the original lighthouse was fraught with problems, beginning with a ten-year delay because of difficulties in acquiring the land. Once the purchase finally went through, the man who approved all lighthouse expenditures (The Fifth Auditor of the Treasury), was far more interested in saving money than in building a lighthouse. Although normally we would applaud efforts to curtail government spending, in this case it was disastrous. As if having Scrooge holding the purse strings wasn’t bad enough, the overseer of the construction was a retired Customs official who knew nothing about lighthouses and ignored the engineer’s recommendations. The result was a monument to inefficiency. The 54-foot tower housed not a Fresnel lens, but an inferior reflector lighting system that frequently didn’t work. The unsupported brick foundation quickly developed cracks and leaks and began to sink on one side. Within a couple of years the lighthouse resembled the leaning Tower of Pisa, without the cultural cachet, and had to be abandoned. A mere eleven years after it was constructed, the now derelict lighthouse was razed.

The second lighthouse, although better built, fared even worse. Completed in 1859, the new Bodie Island Lighthouse was designed by the trusty Army Corps of Engineers, and boasted a graceful 80-foot tower of whitewashed brick and an iron lantern room. The third-order Fresnel lens was visible fifteen miles out to sea, but almost immediately the Civil War brought an end to its usefulness. Retreating Confederate soldiers, trying to foil the Union Navy any way they could, blew up the lighthouse in 1861. Bodie’s Fresnel lens was later discovered by Union troops in the rotunda of the North Carolina Capitol building, where “a vast pile of lighthouse apparatus: costly lamps and reflectors of Fresnel and Argand” had been cached by the Confederates.

Perhaps dispirited about their first two doomed attempts at Bodie Island, the Lighthouse Board dragged their feet commissioning another lighthouse. It took several years of vehement petitions from understandably concerned sea captains for construction to begin on a third lighthouse. In 1871 the Lighthouse Board finally purchased a new 15-acre site north of Oregon Inlet, and Dexter Stetson, the construction foreman who had just completed the Cape Hatteras tower, set to work. The same innovative foundation used at Cape Hatteras was repeated at Bodie Island, with stacked timber pilings below the ground and granite blocks above the base. The 164-foot tower’s first-order Fresnel lens, fabricated by Barbier and Fenestre of Paris, was lit on October 1, 1872.

Aerial view of Bodie Island Lighthouse Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard

Except for an unfortunate flock of geese crashing into the lens just eighteen days after it was first lit, the lighthouse has had a relatively peaceful existence. Strategically placed screening has protected the lens from further collisions with birds. Originally, the spiral stairway, attached to a the metal lantern at the top and a copper rod that was inserted into the ground at the base, served as the lightning conductor. During a storm, a keeper on one of the stairway landings received a rather severe shock that left the lower half of his body numb for quite some time. An engineer recommended that a conducting cable, insulated from the stairway, be run inside the tower, but it took another lightning strike in 1884, before this alteration was made.

On September 19, 1932 the lighthouse was electrified through the installation of a generator at the station. This led the way to the lighthouse being fully automated in 1940. Ownership of the Bodie Island Light Station, excepting a square plot of land, 100 feet on each side, on which the lighthouse stood, was transferred to the National Park Service in 1953. This same year commercial power was extended to the lighthouse.

For several years, John Gaskill served as a volunteer at the Bodie Island Lighthouse, sharing experiences and stories with visitors who were permitted to enter the base of the tower. John was an excellent docent, as his father, Vernon, was the last principal keeper at Bodie Island, serving from 1919 to 1940. Most people would assume that the keepers had their families with them at Bodie Island, but this was not the case for most of John’s childhood. The only access to the island was by boat at that time, and the closest school was at Manteo on Roanoke Island. John and his siblings lived with their mother in Wanchese so they could attend school, but on holidays and during the summer the family would live together at the lighthouse.

The horizontally banded Bodie Island Lighthouse was officially transferred from the Coast Guard to the National Park Service on July 13, 2000. The structural preservation of the tower thus became the responsibility of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, but the Coast Guard was still in charge of maintaining the Fresnel lens, which continued to serve as a navigational aid. In 2003, the Coast Guard announced its intentions to remove the Fresnel lens from the tower. This news was not well received by the public, nor by Jeffrey Crow, head of the North Carolina Historical Preservation Office, who declared that removing the lens would have “an adverse effect upon the historic property.” The Coast Guard was flexible, and a plan was worked out whereby the park service would assume responsibility for the aid to navigation, after it was converted from a federal aid to navigation to a private aid to navigation. The lens was officially transferred at a ceremony held at the lighthouse on April 25, 2005.

As full custodian of the lighthouse, the park service is planning a complete restoration of the tower, which has not received major preservation work since it was constructed. The poor condition of the lighthouse was evidenced on August 9, 2004 when two large cast-iron chunks fell from the gallery atop the tower. Fortunately no one was injured, but the park service has since closed the base of the tower to visitors and erected a fence around the lighthouse to keep people a safe distance away from the lighthouse.

After funding for restoration of Bodie Island Lighthouse was removed from the federal budget in 2008, hopes for a timely repair of the tower began to fade as the economy slipped into recession, but ironically it is often in times of scarcity that some of the most ambitious projects are undertaken. Thus it was that $3 million was included in the 2009 Omnibus Budget Bill. This money will provide for the repair and replacement of metalwork, the repair of masonry and stone, the rehabilitation of floors, windows and framing, and the upgrading of electrical systems. The work will begin in August of 2009 and last for approximately eighteen months. Restoration of the rare first-order Fresnel lens atop the lighthouse will be covered by $100,000 provided earlier in the year.

The keeper’s duplex now serves as a visitor center, housing a great bookstore and displays about the lighthouse.

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References

1. Lighthouses of the Carolinas: A Short History and Guide, Terrance Zepke, 1998.
2. Cape Hatteras National Seashore website.

A visitor center in the keeper's dwelling, which houses a great bookstore, is open daily from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. from Memorial Day through Labor Day, and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. the remainder of the year. The grounds around the lighthouse are accessible during daylight hours, and the base of the tower is open during the summer on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. For more information, call (252) 441-5711.