Sandy Hook Lighthouse

The oldest continuously operating lighthouse in the United States, built seven years before the Revolution to guide ships into New York Harbor, has kept its light burning through a war fought over it and two and a half centuries of shifting coastline.

New York merchants, eager to reduce shipwrecks at the treacherous entrance to New York Harbor, funded construction of what was originally called the 'New York Lighthouse' in 1764, more than a decade before the American Revolution. Builder Isaac Conro raised an 85-foot octagonal masonry tower at the tip of the Sandy Hook peninsula, and the light went into service that same year, guiding merchant ships safely toward port.

During the Revolutionary War, British forces occupied the lighthouse and used it to guide their own shipping into the harbor, while American militia made several unsuccessful attempts to disable or destroy it and deny the British that advantage. The light survived the war intact and continued operating afterward, eventually receiving a third-order Fresnel lens in 1857 that dramatically improved its range and brightness.

In the centuries since its construction, longshore drift has steadily extended the Sandy Hook peninsula northward, so the lighthouse that once stood at the water's edge now sits roughly a mile and a half inland from the point. Still an active aid to navigation, it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1996 and is managed by the National Park Service as part of Gateway National Recreation Area, remaining the oldest continuously operating lighthouse in the country.