Sandy Hook Light
The Sandy Hook Lighthouse, located about one and a half statute miles (2.4 km) inland from the tip of Sandy Hook, New Jersey, is the oldest working lighthouse in the United States. It was designed and built in 1764 by Isaac Conro. At that time, it stood only 500 feet (150 m) from the tip of Sandy Hook; however, today, due to growth caused by littoral drift, it is almost one and a half miles (2.4 km) inland from the tip.
The light was built to aid mariners entering the southern end of the New York Harbor. It was originally called New York Lighthouse because it was funded through a New York Assembly lottery and a tax on all ships entering the Port of New York. Sandy Hook Light has endured an attempt to destroy it – as an aid to British navigation – by Benjamin Tupper, and a subsequent occupancy of British soldiers during the Revolutionary War.
Sandy Hook Lighthouse, which was restored in spring 2000, is part of the Sandy Hook Unit of Gateway National Recreation Area administered by the National Park Service. Seven days a week, National Park Service Park Rangers offer free tours every half hour from 1:00 p.m. until 4:30 p.m.
Read more about Sandy Hook Light: In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words sandy, hook and/or light:
“So near along life’s stream are the fountains of innocence and youth making fertile its sandy margin; and the voyageur will do well to replenish his vessels often at these uncontaminated sources.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... with her shoulders as bare as a building,
with her thin foot and her thin toes,
with an old red hook in her mouth,
the mouth that kept bleeding
into the terrible fields of her soul . . .”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“The press is no substitute for institutions. It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents, and eruptions. It is only when they work by a steady light of their own, that the press, when it is turned upon them, reveals a situation intelligible enough for a popular decision.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)