Charleston Light on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina, which is the northern entrance to Charleston Harbor, was built to replace the defunct Morris Island Light on Morris Island. Construction was started in 1960, and it was first lit on June 15, 1962.
The lighthouse has a steel frame, an aluminum alloy skin, and a triangular cross section. It is 140 ft (42.7 m) tall. The focal plane of the light is 163 ft (49.7 m) above mean sea level. Originally painted white and red-orange, it is now a black upper half and white lower half. It is the only U.S. lighthouse with an elevator and air conditioning and was the last on shore manned lighthouse to be built. Only the Texas Tower Offshore Lighthouses were built later starting in 1961 with Buzzards Bay Entrance Light.
It has a DCB 24 light. It originally had 28 million candelas (candlepower) and was the second most powerful in the Western Hemisphere. As the light was actually too dazzling, the power was lowered to 1.2 million candelas and could still be seen over 26 miles. Its characteristic is two 0.2 s flashes separated by 4.8 s every 30 s. The light was automated in 1975.
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“There is a relation between the hours of our life and the centuries of time. As the air I breathe is drawn from the great repositories of nature, as the light on my book is yielded by a star a hundred millions of miles distant, as the poise of my body depends on the equilibrium of centrifugal and centripetal forces, so the hours should be instructed by the ages and the ages explained by the hours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)