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Backed by a congressional appropriation of $6,000, Winslow Lewis set out to build a lighthouse at Barnegat Inlet in 1834. A retired sea captain, Lewis was tapped by his friend Stephen Pleasonton, Fifth Auditor of the Treasury Department, to build several of the early U.S. lighthouses. A location some 300 feet south of the inlet was selected for the tower, which stood between forty and fifty feet tall and exhibited a light consisting of eleven lamps set in fourteen-inch reflectors. Henry V. Low was the first keeper at the station, serving from August 3, 1835 until his death on March 12, 1838.

Even though the keepers performed their duty admirably, mariners were dissatisfied with the quality of the light. In 1852, Captain H. K. Davenport, of the U.S. Navy mail steamer Cherokee complained: “Barnegat light is but an indifferent one; is frequently mistaken for a vessel’s light; in hazy weather cannot be seen more than seven miles. Vessels bound to New York from the South generally run for this light, and it is of great importance that it should be a first-order light, and so arranged as not to be mistaken. I think a flash light would be preferable.”

Following the installation of a fourth-order Fresnel lens in 1854, the lighthouse was still considered an inadequate coastal beacon. Lieutenant George Meade, a government engineer, inspected the lighthouse in 1855 and recommended that the existing lighthouse could be patched up for the near term, but that plans should be started immediately for a new first- or second-order light at the inlet.

In 1856, Congress budgeted $60,000 for a first-order light at Barnegat. Lieutenant W. S. Reynolds designed the tower, while Meade supervised the construction. Meade would gain more notoriety just a few years later, when he led the northern troops to victory at Gettysburg. Before Meade completed the lighthouse, the old tower and keeper’s dwelling were lost to the encroaching sea.

The southward movement of barrier islands and inlets along the New Jersey coast is a natural process caused by the combined action of waves and currents. The force of the waves hitting the beach excavates significant amounts of sand, which is then caught in the prevailing current that flows south.

First-order Fresnel lens from Barnegat Lighthouse

To protect the new lighthouse from the southward migration of the inlet, it was located some 900 feet south of the original tower, providing a buffer zone that would hopefully last many years. A temporary wooden tower, topped with the lantern room salvaged from the toppled lighthouse, was put into service until the new tower could be completed. Living quarters for keeper James Fuller were built into the temporary tower’s base.

Work on the new tower began after a ten acre parcel was purchased on July 1, 1857. The workers dug deep into the sand to set a foundation that would support the weight of the planned 172-foot brick tower. The outer conical wall had a thickness of 4’6” at the base and tapered to a mere eighteen inches at the lantern room, while the inner cylindrical wall had a constant thickness of nine inches. A spiral staircase with 217 treads wound its way up the lighthouse supported by a central shaft.

The first-order Fresnel lens for the Barnegat Lighthouse accounted for a quarter of the project’s $60,000 budget and was fabricated in 1856 by Henry LePaute of Paris, France. Its 1027 glass prisms and brass mountings were shipped to New York on board the Arago in March of 1857. When assembled in the lantern room, the lens had twenty-four bulls-eye panels distributed evenly around is central band. Weights, suspended in the tower, and a clockwork mechanism rotated the lens once every four minutes, producing a brilliant flash with a period of ten seconds.

The light was activated on January 1, 1859 and was kept by two keepers, who lived in a new dwelling constructed near the base of the tower. On August 30, 1886, one keeper was in the watchroom atop the lighthouse, when the tower lurched up and down and then swayed from north to south. The keeper rushed out to the gallery to see what was happening, but had difficulty doing so because of the motion of the tower. The keeper "was an old sailor, not given to being seasick, but such was the motion that he thought another person might have been nauseated by it." The keeper said the lens rattled more than he had ever heard it do before, so much so that he feared it would come crashing down. The chief clerk of the Lighthouse Board was sent to Barnegat Lighthouse following the earthquake to see if the statements carried in certain newspapers regarding the effect of the tremor on the station were true. The accounts must have been exaggerated as no damage was found by the keepers or the clerk.

In 1889, a sprawling, two-story triplex was built to house the three keepers then assigned to the station. With the exception of two nearby hotels, the twenty-room dwelling was the grandest structure in Barnegat City, and coupled with the towering lighthouse, was an impressive sight.

Barnegat Lighthouse with triplex dwelling circa 1920 Photograph courtesy Library of Congress

The winter of 1919-1920 brought a series of destructive storms to the area, and the high water mark crept an alarming 275 feet towards the tower and dwelling in just six months. Sandbags and a protective concrete wall were placed around the triplex, but they proved no match for the relentless pounding of the ocean. It was soon evident the dwelling was a lost cause, and the magnificent house was sold for $125 to salvagers who had the site cleared in just a few weeks.

In 1924, a bill, allocating $100,000 towards the preservation of Barnegat Lighthouse, was introduced in Congress. After much political wrangling, the sum had ballooned nearly five-fold, but the money was now earmarked for the vague purpose of “establishing and improving aids to navigation and other works as may be specifically approved by the Secretary of Commerce.” When the Lighthouse Bureau submitted a grossly inflated cost estimate for saving the lighthouse, by then known affectionately as “Old Barney,” the Department of Commerce refused to fund the project.

The lighthouse was turned over to the State of New Jersey in 1926, and the following year a lightship was placed eight miles offshore from the inlet, effectively eliminating the need for the onshore light. The Fresnel lens was removed in 1927 and taken to district headquarters on Staten Island. An acetylene lamp, followed shortly by an electric lamp, were used in the now minor aid to navigation.

Although the Lighthouse Bureau had seemingly abandoned Old Barney, Mayor Butler and the citizens of Barnegat City and Long Beach Island were determined to fight until the tower fell into the sea or was safely protected. The community raised a sizeable sum and constructed their own emergency jetty out of old cars, trucks, and baby carriages. At one point in 1933, the water was a mere two feet from the tower’s foundation at high tide.

The federal government rejoined the battle for Barney in 1934, funding a $12,000 project to encircle the tower’s foundation with steel rings. Sand was first excavated up to a depth of twenty feet around the foundation. The steel rings, supported by iron rods, were then set in place and covered with cement. A 175-foot semicircular curtain of steel piling was also driven thirty feet into the sand at a distance of twenty feet from the tower. These reinforcements proved effective during a severe storm that struck a few months later and helped the lighthouse withstand numerous subsequent onslaughts.

Barnegat Lighthouse was discontinued in 1944, but public interest in Old Barney continued. The first-order Fresnel lens was returned to the area in 1955, when it was retrieved from the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and given to the Barnegat Light Historical Museum. A bronze bust of George Meade was unveiled at the dedication of Barnegat Lighthouse State Park on July 11, 1957, one hundred years after work had started on the tower.

A 12-inch chunk of metal fell off the lighthouse in 1988, prompting state officials to close the tower to the public. Sidney Rothman, a local resident and unofficial keeper of the lighthouse, pushed for the tower to be restored and reopened. Over the next 2 ½ years, $660,000 in grants were raised to repair the masonry, brick, and stone portions of the lighthouse, replace cast-iron sections of the gallery, and install a protective grillwork around the gallery’s railing. The tower was reopened to the public in June of 1991. While the tower was receiving attention, a new jetty was also built near the lighthouse.

Barnegat Lighthouse will always be endangered as long as it remains so close to the inlet, but if the local community and visitors continue to have interest in the historic tower, embattled Old Barney will likely survive another war or two – just like its maker, General George Meade.

In late 2008, it was announced that a new beacon atop the tower would shine forth at dusk on January 1, 2009, 150 years since the lighthouse was first activated. The non-profit Friends of Barnegat Lighthouse raised the money for the new $15,000 beacon through a combination of membership dues, public donations, and $6,000 in funds collected by selling certificates saying "I climbed Old Barney" for a dollar a piece. Long Beach Township Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 5, which uses the image of Old Barney in its uniform patches, made a $15,000 donation doubling the money the Friends of Barnegat Lighthouse had raised and allowing for the lantern room glass to be replaced as well.

With thousands of onlookers watching in anticipation, the light was manually activated at 5 p.m. on New Year's Day. In the future, an optical light sensor will activate the new light, manufactured in New Zealand by Vega Industries, each night at dusk. Once again, Barnegat's trademark signal of a white flash every ten seconds can be seen along the New Jersey coast.

Photo Gallery: 1 2 3 4

References

1. “The Saga of the Barnegat Lighthouse," Don Clark France, The Keeper’s Log, Summer 1994.
2. Guarding New Jersey’s Shore: : Lighthouses and Life-Saving Stations, David Veasey, 2001.
3. Sentinels of the Shore, Bill Gately, 1998.

Barnegat Lighthouse is open for climbing daily throughout the entire year, weather permitting. From April 1 through October 31, the lighthouse is open daily from 9:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The lighthouse is open from 9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday, the remainder of the year. Call (609) 494-2016 for more information.

The first-order Fresnel lens used in the tower is on display at the Barnegat Light Historical Society Museum in nearby Barnegat Light. The museum is open in June and September on weekends from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. During July and August, the museum is open daily during the same hours.