Race Rock Lighthouse
N 41° 14.608 W 072° 02.828
18T E 747439 N 4569990
Victorian house style lighthouse built in 1879 off the west end of Fishers Island, NY.
Waymark Code: WMMZC
Location: New York, United States
Date Posted: 08/21/2006
Views: 70
I have known this lighthouse all my life. When I was a kid it used to have a foghorn that can best be described as sounding like the death rattle of a cow. The "modern" one was installed in the '60's. The original Fresnel lens is located in the Henry L. Ferguson Museum on Fishers Island. The station was manned up until at least 1978. It now runs automatically.
When this station was still manned by the Coast Guard I used to go out to visit with one of the rotating crews, bringing them beer and goodies in exchange for a chance to fish for snapper blues off the rip-rap and a place to stay for the night. It is an amazing structure, build on a huge granite boulder into which the cisterns for storing fresh water and lamp oil in the old days were blasted, then lined with concrete.
It was considered as one of the greatest engineering feats of the late 19th Century, and it still stands guard over one of the most treacherous stretches of water in the eastern US. It was built on the summit of the boulder by first erecting a cofferdam, from which the seawater was pumped out. The cisterns were blasted, the foundations were laid, and the structure completed by 1879. It is surrounded by protective granite riprap, with a small cove set in the northeast for sheltering the keepers' boats.
Coastal Lighthouse: Lighthouse
Range Lights: Not listed
LIGHTHOUSE CHALLENGE VISIT: Not listed
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