In order to promote safe navigation of shipping through Beaufort Inlet past numerous shoals and sand bars, the US Lighthouse Board established the Bogue Banks Lighthouse and a navigational beacon on the eastern end of Bogue Banks near Fort Macon in 1855. Built under the supervision of the Army Engineer Department about 200 yards northwest of Fort Macon, the Bogue Banks Lighthouse was a 50-foot high brick lighthouse with a beacon that shone twelve and a half nautical miles through a fourth order Fresnel lens.
In addition to the lighthouse, a navigational beacon was built on the south slope of the fort on a 30-foot wooden tower. The beacon had a sixth order Fresnel lens and was visible 10.6 nautical miles. Both lights provided a range by which mariners were able to take navigational bearings to pass safely through the channel of Beaufort Inlet.
Casualties of War
The two lights were in service for seven years until 1862. During the siege of Fort Macon in the War Between the States, Confederate soldiers of the fort garrison toppled both towers to the ground because they stood in the way of the fort cannons for the impending battle. No traces of either structure remain today.
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Fresnel Lenses
French engineer Augustin-Jean Fresnel (1788-1827) invented a system of lenses for lighthouses that became an industry standard in Europe and North America. The lenses resembled beehives and consisted of dozens of glass prisms arranged to bend and focus the light of old lanterns into projecting beams of light visible for miles. The lenses were arranged into different sizes, or orders, from the massive first order lens over eight feet tall for coastal lighthouses, down to small sixth order lens, seventeen inches tall, for harbor lights.
(caption) A fourth Order Fresnel lens, which was the size used in the Bogue Banks Lighthouse.
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(left) The original plans of the Bogue Banks Lighthouse called for a circular brick tower 50 feet high. When actually built during 1854-55, the tower was made in an octagon shape rather than circular.
(center) An 1862 sketch made by a Union soldier shows the ruined lighthouse after it was destroyed by Fort Macon Confederate soldiers.
(right) The locations of the Bogue Banks Lighthouse and Beacon as shown on the 1857 Coast and Geodetic Survey Chart.
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