Fire Island Lighthouse
Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox lighthouse The Fire Island Lighthouse is a visible landmark on the Great South Bay, in southern Suffolk County, New York on the western end of Fire Island, a barrier island off the southern coast of Long Island.<ref name='ARLHS'>ARLHS World List of Lights</ref><ref>Template:Cite Rowlett</ref> The lighthouse is located within Fire Island National Seashore and just to the east of Robert Moses State Park. It is part of the Fire Island Light Station which contains the light, keepers quarters, the lens building containing the original first-order Fresnel lens, and a boat house.
HistoryEdit
The current lighthouse is a Template:Convert stone tower that began operation in 1858 to replace the Template:Convert tower originally built in 1826. The United States Coast Guard decommissioned the light in 1974. In 1982 the Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society (FILPS) was formed to preserve the lighthouse. FILPS raised over $1.2 million to restore the tower and light. On May 25, 1986 the United States Coast Guard returned the Fire Island Lighthouse to an active aid to navigation. On February 22, 2006, the light became a private aid to navigation. It continues to be on the nautical charts, but is operated and maintained by the Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society and not the USCG. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1981 and a boundary increase for the national historic district occurred in 2010.<ref name="nris"/><ref name="nris2"/><ref name="nrhpinv_ny">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }} See also: {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="nrhpinv_ny2">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }} See also: {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
It is listed as Fire Island Light, number 695, in the USCG light lists.<ref>Template:Cite uscgll</ref>
When the lighthouse was built it was on the edge of Fire Island Inlet and marked the western end of Fire Island. However Fire Island has extended itself through accumulating sand so that the lighthouse is now nearly Template:Convert from the western end of the island at Democrat Point.<ref name=USGS_hist>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
The Archives Center at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History has a collection (#1055) of souvenir postcards of lighthouses and has digitized 272 of these and made them available online. These include postcards of Fire Island Light<ref name="postcard">Smithsonian lighthouse postcards</ref> with links to customized nautical charts provided by National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.
The lighthouse celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2008, the same year as the 100th anniversary of Robert Moses State Park.
AccessEdit
The lighthouse can be accessed by a short walk from Robert Moses State Park Field 5. It is open to the public daily. Tower tours are available for a small fee.
In popular cultureEdit
From 1970 to 1975, the lighthouse and its surrounding area were seen in the opening and closing credits sequences of the CBS television soap opera The Guiding Light.<ref>Archived at GhostarchiveTemplate:Cbignore and the Wayback MachineTemplate:Cbignore: {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}Template:Cbignore</ref><ref>Archived at GhostarchiveTemplate:Cbignore and the Wayback MachineTemplate:Cbignore: {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}Template:Cbignore</ref>
Some of the final episode of season 1 of TV show The Following was filmed at Fire Island Lighthouse and surrounding buildings.<ref name="filming1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Men in Black II also included some filming on the island in the immediate vicinity of the lighthouse.<ref name="filming2">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
A 1999 Channel 4 TV series featuring Stephen Fry and called Fire Island included filming of the lighthouse.<ref name="filming3">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
The 2008 movie What Happens in Vegas with Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher featured the lighthouse as Diaz character's favorite place.
Rumors of paranormal activityEdit
According to local legend the lighthouse is haunted. The most prominent legend is that the historic structure is haunted by the ghosts of a lighthouse keeper and his daughter. Legend has it that the lighthouse keeper's daughter got sick and died before her father could get help to arrive from the mainland. The grieving father then responded by taking his own life by hanging himself in the lighthouse's tower. Now the ghosts of father and daughter supposedly haunt the lighthouse to this day. Additionally, many also claim that the ghosts of carious people who died in shipwrecks both before and after the construction of the current lighthouse also haunt the lighthouse, including the ghost of author and women's activist Margaret Fuller.<ref name=":0">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> On January 7, 2022 a group of seven paranormal investigators were given permission by the Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society to investigate the lighthouse. They produced several pieces of video and photographic evidence of supposed paranormal activity that was later published by Fire Island & Great South Bay News on October 20, 2024.<ref name=":0" />
See alsoEdit
ReferencesEdit
External linksEdit
- Template:Commons category-inline
- Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society
- Fire Island National Seashore: Fire Island Lighthouse
- Fire Island Lighthouse at Lighthousefriends.com
Template:Fire Island Template:National Register of Historic Places in New York Template:Lighthouses of New York Template:Authority control