We began our day thinking that we were going to relax. We’ve had about 5 straight days of activity and it’s time for these old bones to rest. Then we checked the weather and - rain tomorrow and clouds other days, if we want to see the most well-known lighthouse in America on a sunny day, we’d better go today. Don’t waste a sunny day sitting around. We’re off. The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is calling our names.
Nice drive down through the Cape, Tall dunes covered with beach grasses. Wetlands with myriads of birds feeding. Then we got to the area where the dunes are right on top of the road, literally. Here is the heavy equipment moving the sand back to the beach. The right scoop is on top of the dune, scooping out big shovel fulls and depositing them behind it, making a ledge for another piece of equipment. Meanwhile, the second piece, the one on the left, is on the ledge following behind, scooping the sand off the road. What an arduous operation. And, I suppose, that when they make it to the end of the dune, they drive back to the beginning and start the whole process all over again. Boy, Mother Nature keeps us busy.
Finally, we could see our goal in the distance. Standing tall with its black and while circular design, it still stands as a beacon and a goal.
But, we learned that it has had it mysterious disappearances. One time it just vanished. The second time, it was stolen only to be recovered in a marsh through an anonymous tip.
When the Civil War started, Confederate soldiers took the lens from the lighthouse to keep it out of Union hands and to prevent Union ships from using it when they blockaded the coast. After the war, a new lighthouse was built and a lens was put into it. But what happened to the lens that the Confederate soldiers had taken out during the war? Where did it go? Who had it? Looks like it vanished into thin air. A mystery.
In 1936, the Coast Guard replaced this light with 2 1000-watt bulbs and abandoned the lighthouse. Vandals entered the lighthouse in 1949 and destroyed and removed almost half of the prisms in the lens that was there and damaged the bronze frame. Finally the Coast Guard removed it and stored it but then was stolen.
Then the 2nd mystery starts. What happened to it? Where did it go? Who took it? Where did they hide it? No one knew and there is the second mystery. How do you hide a first order Fresnel lens? It’s 12’ tall, weighs 6000 lbs and you can actually walk up into it to light it. Here’s a picture of one from the San Francisco Maritime Museum. This is not something that you put into a cupboard and forget about. You’re not going to hide this baby under the bed.
Finally North Carolina lighthouse author and filmmaker, Kevin Duffus, solved the first mystery; what happened to the first lens after the Civil War. After looking through an ‘Everest’ of official paperwork, he realized that the lens had been recovered right after the War, returned to the Lighthouse Service, repaired and reinstalled - right back where it had come from - into the Cape Hatteras Light. OK, Duffus has solved one mystery but it still hidden.
In the second disappearance, it was discovered in a marsh - by a anonymous tip.
Finally, the lens is available for viewing, much damaged, well traveled but still around. We found it a few days later at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum.
The first time it ‘disappeared’ it was in the lighthouse. Hidden in plain sight.
The second time it ‘disappeared’ it was found through an anonymous tip.
This one Lens has certainly had a history.
The lighthouse doesn’t open for climbing until May 18 - we’re a bit early but we could explore the keeper’s house where they had lots of interesting displays about wrecks in the past, about the lighthouse during the war, about the keepers who had lived there and about the time they had to move the lighthouse because the ocean was wearing away the sand in front of it. But that is a story for another time.
‘A foursome of senior golfers hit the course with waning enthusiasm for the sport.
"These hills are getting steeper as the years go by," one complained.
"These fairways seem to be getting longer too," wheezed a second.
"And somehow, the sand traps seem to be bigger than I remember 'em too," said the third.
Hearing just about enough from his buddies, the oldest, and the wisest of the foursome at 87-years-old, piped up and said, "Oh my friends, just be thankful we're still on THIS side of the grass!’
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