|
Managing Organization:
New Point Comfort Preserve
Telephone:
804-725-4034
Website: http://www.newpointcomfort.com
Email: ima@visi.net
Notes:
This is the third oldest lighthouse on the Chesapeake Bay. It was badly damaged by a hurricane in 1933. Through the efforts of the New Point Lighthouse Lantern Committee of Mathews County, the lighthouse was refitted with a solar powered fixed beacon on December 12, 1999. It is within the New Point Comfort Preserve. On March 27, 2001, the Mathews County Board of Supervisors approved an agreement with the Mathews County Historical Society "for the management, maintenance, repair and preservation of the New Point Comfort Lighthouse." In March 2003 it was announced that the lighthouse has been included in a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study of the shoreline erosion along the bay. The tower is on the Preservation Alliance of Virginia's most-endangered list. A group called the New Point Comfort Lighthouse Preservation Task Force is now working toward a complete restoration. In October 2021, a $1.8 million restoration of the lighthouse was completed, and in 2022, the lighthouse was officially removed from the Lighthouse Digest Doomsday List of Endangered Lighthouses. Tower Height: 58 Height of Focal Plane: 56 Description of Tower: White, octagonal sandstone tower with black lantern.
This light is not operational
Date Established: 1806 Date Present Tower Built: 1806 Date Deactivated: 1963 Date Automated: 1930 Optics: 18??: Fourth order Fresnel lens. Current Use: Part of nature preserve. Open To Public? Grounds only. Directions:
There is a view of the lighthouse from a boardwalk in the New Point Comfort Preserve at the end of Route 600 in Bavon. Listed on the
National Register of Historic Places Keepers: Elzy Burroughs (1804-1814), Robert Lithburn (1814-1815), James B. H. Johnson (1815-1819), William Johnson (1819-1830), William R. Brownley (1830-1846), Isaac Foster (1846-1854), James B. White (1854), Edward S. White (1854-1865), Jas S. Allen (1865-1869), Sylvester H. Wolhiser (1869-1871), J. McHenry Farley (1871-1873), John D. Hudgins (1873-1876), Leonard Smithers (1876-1879), A. F. Hudgins (1879-1881), William G. Ripley (1881-1883), C. W. Forest (1883-1888), Oliver R. Hudgins (1888-1899), James B. Hurst (1899-1901), Richard Wiscum Marchant (1901-1906), Wesley F. RIpley (1906-1919), Captain Sibley (1919-1930), Henry Dow (1930-1954?)
| 