By: Meghan Agresto, Outer Banks Conservationists – Currituck Beach Lighthouse Site Manager
Long Point Island, Gas works, and Light Station
Long Point Light Station in the Currituck Sound, a project of the United States Light-House Establishment, was home to elaborate buildings and hard work for decades around the turn of the 19th century. And as rarely seen, in recent local Outer Banks history at least, it went from having beautiful large houses to becoming an uninhabited, wide open space.
The 54 acres[1] of Long Point did not actually constitute an island until 1859[2] when the cut for the Intracoastal Waterway came to Coinjock, separating the land from Church’s Island. From 1879 until about 1919, the newly-formed island was home to a federal light station with a beacon; three lighthouse keepers and their families; a boathouse, scow (flat bottomed boat for transporting material) and steam-launch; and a “gas works” where the lighthouse keepers/engineers produced compressed gas for the beacon on the island and beacons on stakes nearby in the surrounding waters. At times a teacher lived in the house of the principal Keeper[3]. And for at least one night, it was home to an American President!
Though the island is now devoid of all evidence of the humanity and engineering that existed there for about 40 years, the lighthouse keepers’ houses do still exist, but you have to travel east or west on the Currituck Sound to see them.
A light station and gas station
The Weekly Observer of Raleigh reported in late 1878[4], “The U.S. Government has appropriated money[5] for the erection of beacon lights in Currituck and Albemarle Sounds… The coast ought to be fringed with these beacon lights. The winter winds rarely fail to drive a small fleet of vessels on the treacherous shore, and the expense ought to be no consideration where such frightful dangers can be obviated.”[6] The beacons were first “exhibited” in the summer of 1879[7].
Appletons’ Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1880 helps explain the work the keepers had to do with regards to the pressed-gas lights: “Gas is made and compressed at its own gas-works, and it is carried to each of the beacons in tanks, built into a scow, which is towed by a steam-launch, manned by the keepers of these ten small lights, who reside on board. The gas in each will burn for ten days and nights, if need be. Though the action of this illuminant is not unsatisfactory, it can hardly be said that it has yet passed beyond the experimental stage.”
And in 1882, it was reported: “Gas is made at the central station, and is forced by a compressor into a battery of fifteen cylinders placed on a scow. The scow is towed to the beacons and connection made with them, and the cylinders at the beacons filled by the flow of gas from the cylinders on the scow. The lenses on the beacons were made at the light-house depot on Staten Island…. John Rodgers, Rear-Admiral, U.S.N., Chairman[8]
The National Archives online catalogue has some images that help imagine what those lighthouse keepers saw while at work at the gas works:
[9] “Coal Shed. Long Point Gas Station, 5th Dist. Photographs (8 L] with Engr’s letter of 4 Mar ’98 – filed Mar. 8 ‘98, [10] “Gas holder” (Likely around 1898)
The gas beacons in the water around Long Point Island
The 9 beacons in the surrounding waters, were each an “iron sleeve-pile, cast with a screw, the sleeve fitted over a wooden pile driven into the shoal. To the top of the sleeve, 3 feet above the water, an iron column, 12 ½ feet in length, is bolted, which supports a lantern and the ladder for reaching it. Each beacon is protected from damage by vessels or rafts, by from three to eight fender-piles driven around it and connected by pieces of Georgia pine, 1 foot by 3 inches, securely spiked to the fender piles.”[12]
This National Archives image gives us a pretty good idea of what those beacons looked like:
Financing the Sound beacons:
At Long Point Island’s founding, it was known that the gas works station was not going to be cheap; but making the gas and using it instead of oil would minimize the frequency with which keepers would have to visit each beacon. “In 1880 the board decided to try compressed gas as an illuminant for the ten [nine pile lights in the water, one on a building on Long Point Island itself] beacons… It was induced to try this, not because of any great reduction of expenses, but because it would not necessitate the lights be visited so often to replenish them…. [T]he cost of building being too great to allow of quarters for keepers at each light, and a small steam launch is employed to carry the keepers from a central station to the lights…. John Rodgers, Rear-Admiral, U.S.N., Chairman [16]”
It is no surprise then that the three “Currituck Sound beacons, N.C.” keepers did not come cheap. Work at that “central station” was full of risk; the keepers produced the compressed gas and delivered the petroleum-product derivative over water safely to the pile beacons. In turn, they were paid more than other lighthouse keepers in North Carolina. That includes those of the tall, seacoast towers of Currituck Beach, Body’s Island, and Cape Hatteras in similarly ranked jobs.
How best to light the Currituck Sound:
By the time Long Point was eliminated as a federal light station about 40 years after it was commissioned, it had mostly remained steady in its original charge: a light house and gas works station for compressed gas for nearby stake lights.
Congressional letters in 1882 tell us that the invention of John M. Foster for furnishing light by the use of compressed gas was “in use by the government in Currituck Sound, North Carolina, &c.”[18] and “The candle-power of the gaslight is, according to Mr. Foster, from 70 to 80 candles, being dependent upon the character of the naphtha and the care with which it is made….[19]” There was some discussion early on about switching over to Pintsch lighted buoys but it does not seem like that ever happened to the ten lights the Long Point Keepers were first charged with, though as their time went on and water travel became faster, their scope of work did expand to include more than just the Currituck Sound.
In 1886, Congress learns that the system of compressed gas could “burn continuously, night and day, requiring no attention except once each month to refill the gas tanks.”[20]” In 1900 “…70,660 cubic feet of gas was made at the gas plant at Long Point and transported to the different beacon lights by the Bramble.”[21]
Keeper, Engineers, Masters of Lighthouse Tenders on Long Point
Through the work of gas-making and gas-transporting, the three longest serving keepers there – William Shinault, Walter Gray, and Joseph Frances Talbott – worked together in 1883 and (with a little mixing up in the middle) were still all working together in 1905! Perhaps that was true because of the lovely island, the fine housing, or the conveniences[22]:
In 1881 a lighthouse keeper’s dwelling was built on the island, a small “house” with shingled roof and brick floor for a retort (boiler) for gas production, and a brick cistern for storing the gas produced. An old wooden barn was moved to a new spot on the island “affording a good barn for cows…” The principal keeper’s dwelling was “a frame structure built on a pile foundation and contains six rooms. A detached kitchen was also built, affording, with the old dwelling, ample accommodations for the keepers of the beacon-lights.” Also, “A frame building, with slip, 75 feet long and 16 feet wide with wings 7 feet wide, making a total width of 30 feet, was constructed in March, as a boat-house for the steam launch Bramble, in attendance on the beacons, and a scow with gas storage tanks. An auxiliary boiler was placed in the boat-house, to furnish steam for running the compressor, used in filling the storage-tanks on the scow. A portable forge, with various tools and supplies, was supplied the station.”[23]
In 1882 “The inclosures (sic) to the dwellings were nicely graded, sown with grass-seed, planted with willow, oak, pine, holly, and smaller shrubbery, and provided with neat fences, painted and whitewashed…”[24]
The light station at Long Point was “connected by telephone with the Norfolk buoy and supply depot, so that orders for repairs may be sent in haste and derangement of beacons may be reported from either end promptly.”[28] In 1888, a double keepers dwelling was built for assistant keepers. [29]
Long Point’s Connection to Currituck Beach Lighthouse
A note in the keeper’s logs of the Currituck Beach Lighthouse serves to remind us that Long Point Island and its keepers were tied to the lives of the keepers of the tall, coastal towers nearby. In 1894: “[Currituck Beach] Keeper went to Long Point for Supplies and returned at 330PM and found his boy 10 years old brutaly (sic) beaten by one L.N. Simmons former keeper of this Station who is now teaching a public school hear (sic) on the beach“[31] And in 1907: The “small sailing vessel “Sharpie”is kept at Long Point to assist in supplying the lights on the seacoast which are reached from the Sound Side.”[32] In September 1914, a Currituck Beach keeper “took Power Boat to Long Point to be examined by engineer of the Tender Juniper.” In January 1917, “Keeper went to Long Point for gasoline…” Long Point across the Currituck Sound is a distance of about 9 miles away.
Keeper William Shinault served at Long Point for almost 35 years, from the time the station was first established in 1879 – with one year of service across the way to serve as Principal Keeper at Currituck Beach Light House (where his infant daughter died) – until the time of his death. His personnel records tell us of a 1905 change to his duties and in his title “to that of Master in the Light-House Service… in addition to his duties as Keeper, acts as Master of the tender Juniper which cares for all the stakes in Core Sound, N.C., formerly maintained by contract, and keeps the gas buoys of the Districts charged with gas.[33]”
But “[O]n the morning of May 30, 1913, William Shinault, first officer on the tender Juniper, at $1200 per annum, was found dead in his stateroom.” A recent donation from the Mary Doxey, a member of Keeper William Shinault’s family, to the non-profit Outer Banks Conservationists, which owns the Currituck Beach Lighthouse in Corolla, provided perhaps the only known image of Keeper Shinault [34]:
(See other OBC blog for more on Shinault and his love letters.)
And a recent OBC purchase of slides of 1893 Long Point images taken by the US Government’s engineer and surveyor, Herbert Bamber, were digitized recently. Here is the assistant keeper’s 1888 duplex dwelling:
And some images obviously taken from the water of the greater shoreline:
Eight keepers total had served on Long Point, including, interestingly, one born in Norway (who might have died young in a government hospital for the insane. Working to see if we can learn more).
President Cleveland, hunting, and Long Point Island
In 1895, President Cleveland spent the night at Long Point while hunting. “Plans for shooting were not allowed to interfere with business, and at 11 a.m. the tender weighed anchor and steamed away to Long Point, where she was stopped over night. Next day the Currituck light was inspected and the boat proceeded up the coast….[35]” When his second term was finished in March, 1897 the president’s family went on to Princeton and he got on the US Light House tender Maple to hunt in the Currituck Sound![36] Which means it is possible that the keepers spent more than just one evening with him.
Gas Works discontinued and Station in Decline:
In June 1914 the station was discontinued, likely precipitated in part due to the death of its long-time keeper. After the gas production was no longer, the lights became maintained by a “Laborer in Charge.” He was only employed for a year there, but likely he was there in September 1914 when the Currituck Beach Lighthouse keeper took the motor boat over. That lighthouse keeper probably saw or knew Mr. Sawyer who lived there with his wife and 4 small children.[37] Here’s a great image of him donated by his grandson to OBC[38]:
In 1915, in another quick turn-around, the Bureau of Light Houses decided to re-establish the light station at Long Point and hired as Keeper William Tate (the post master who was integral in the Wright Brothers coming to experiment with aeronautics in North Carolina and who, by 1914, was a Raft Inspector for the War Department in Coinjock [39]). While on Long Point, living presumably in the principal Keeper’s House, he was commended for rendering assistance to the tugboat Adelaide, floating the gasoline tanker Gratitude, rendering assistance to schooner Hudson, to a freighter, a yacht, motor boats and once, appropriately given his history with the Wright Brothers, to a party of 6 from an airplane in 1917.
Beginning in 1919 but lasting into 1920, the Long Point Principal Keeper’s house was lifted and barged across the Currituck Sound to Currituck Beach Light Station where three keepers and their families had been sharing the 1876 duplex dwelling (not always in total harmony). The Department of Commerce Bureau of Lighthouses Lighthouse Service Bulletin, Volume II from 1918-1923 reports that, “[a]s the keeper’s quarters at Currituck Beach Light Station, N.C., have been inadequate for a number of year, it was decided to relieve the situation by moving an unused dwelling at Long Point Light Station N.C., across Currituck Sound and placing it on a new foundation at Currituck Beach….The work of removing the dwelling was started at Long Point on December 13, 1919, and was completed at Currituck Beach, together with repairs on the wharf there, on March 23, 1920. The work of moving the dwelling, rebuilding the chimneys, building the piers and painting cost about $4,000.” Presumably at around that time though perhaps earlier, Keeper Tate moved over to Coinjock on the mainland nearby.
This definitely marks the end of anyone living on Long Point and begins a long period of demise for Long Point’s dwellings.
Long Point Light Station’s Principal Keeper’s Dwelling
After being barged to Corolla, the 33×34’ Long Point Principal Keeper’s home was placed back on brick piles. After a new chimney and cistern were built for it, it was inhabited for 13 years, though in its new light station location it was used by a 2nd assistant keeper rather than the principal keeper. This photograph courtesy of the NC State Archives shows the house (on the right) soon after it was barged over:
But, in 1933 that keeper’s position was eliminated with the electrification of the beacon there; it is likely that the house was then vacated entirely. By 1937, with the automation of the beacon causing the removal of all keepers, both dwellings would be uninhabited and by the late 1940s the Corolla station was becoming overgrown. Here is Long Point’s keeper’s house on the grounds of Currituck Beach Light Station a few years after the Currituck Beach Station was vacated [40]:
The house spent decades being mostly ignored (having been transferred from the Bureau of Light-Houses to the US Coast Guard to the State of North Carolina), though it perhaps served as housing for the man who built an airstrip at the Whalehead Club in Corolla for Ray Adams, its owner in the 1940s and 1950s.[41]
After the tall, brick Currituck Beach Lighthouse was opened to the public in 1990 by the Outer Banks Conservationists, leasing it from the US Coast Guard, it was reported that, “[d]uring the summer of 1991, thousands of people visited the lighthouse. The funds were used to pay staff, initiate repairs to the lighthouse and to begin rehabilitation of the little Keeper’s House… In 1993 the State amended its lease with OBC as both organizations recognized the ‘now-or-never’ condition of the building.”[42]
A Boundary Expansion Registration form filed in 2000 and added to Currituck Beach Light Station’s National Register classification says, “Its exterior decoration is particularly lively, from its elaborate vergeboard and scalloped upper-story board-andbatten covering to the front shed porch’s bracketed and chamfered posts. The interior of the house follows a center hall plan with its staircase facing the rear of the house. Original elements, such as stairs and simple door and window surrounds in the first floor’s rear wing, are still in place.”
Today the building is open to the public daily in-season on the Currituck Beach Light Station grounds.
Long Point’s duplex assistant keepers’ dwelling
Long Point’s duplex assistant keepers’ house was moved to Coinjock at some point, possibly around the same time that the principal keeper’s dwelling was moved to Corolla. That duplex dwelling in Coinjock is now for sale, as is the land it sits on[43].
Long Point Island Today
Today Long Point Island has very little indication that it once housed houses, boathouses, and a gas manufacturing station. The island is currently for sale[44]. In 2019 the Currituck Board of Commissioners approved a request that the 54 acres of Long Point could be divided into lots where homes could be built. “Leading the list is a maximum of one single-family dwelling not to exceed 4,000 square feet on an island with accessory dwelling units prohibited. The structure must have an approved sprinkler system with a storage tank, pump and emergency backup power source installed for fire protection. In addition, the owner must provide transportation for county staff or other public agencies to access the island for official business.”[45] The island is 800 yards offshore from Barco waterfront.
[1] https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/0-Long-Point-Is-15-Barco-NC-27917/2057664654_zpid/
[2] National Register of Historic Places Albemarle and Chesapeake Canal Historic District https://www.cityofchesapeake.net/DocumentCenter/View/4711/Albemarle-and-Chesapeake-Canal-Historic-District-2003-PDF
[3] US Census, 1900, Currituck County, Church’s Island
[4] The Weekly Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina) · 3 Dec 1878, Tue · Page 4
[5] 1882 Statement of Appropriations: For beacon lights in North River Landing, Currituck Sound, and North River on the line of Atlantic inland navigation and Edenton Harbor, Albemarle Sound: 1879: $13,000 and 1880: $7000
[6] The Weekly Observer (Raleigh, North Carolina) · 3 Dec 1878, Tue · Page 4
[7] Annual report of the Light-House Board to the Secretary of the Treasury for Fiscal Year ending June 30 1879. p. 37 328-227.
[8] 47th Congress, First Session, Senate, Ex. Doc No. 135 March 15 1882 – Letter of the Secretary of the Treasury, Transmitting, in response to Senate Resolution of February 8, 1882 p.2
[9] National Archives Online Catalogue: Identifier, 45694173 Local Identifier 26-LG-23-16B Record Group 26: Records of the U.S. Coast Guard Series: Lighthouses File Unit: North Carolina – Long Point Coal shed. Gas Station District 5
[10] National Archives Online Catalogue: Identifier, 45694179 Local Identifier 26-LG-23-16E Record Group 26: Records of the U.S. Coast Guard Series: Lighthouses File Unit: North Carolina – Long Point Retort District 5
[11] National Archives Online Catalogue: Identifier, 45694187Local Identifier 26-LG-23-17D Record Group 26: Records of the U.S. Coast Guard Series: Lighthouses File Unit: Long Point Light Station, North Carolina. Gas Holder. District 5
[12] Annual report of the Light-House Board to the Secretary of the Treasury for Fiscal Year ending June 30 1879. p. 37 328-227.
[13] Record Group 26: Records of the U.S. Coast Guard Series: Lighthouses File Unit: North Carolina – Reeds Point NAID: 45694471Local ID: 26-LG-24-51 https://catalog.archives.gov/id/45694471
[14] 1883 Image Beacons for Currituck and Albemarle Sounds, signed Engineer O.E. Babcock, found in RG 26, Long Point/Currituck Beach Lighthouse file at NARA-Philadelphia, with notes additional notes in 1895
[15] 1896 Beacon Light At Reed’s Point; Beacons for Currituck and Albemarle Sounds, NARA-Philadelphia, RG 26, Long Point and Currituck Beach files
[16] 47th Congress, First Session, Senate, Ex. Doc No. 135 March 15 1882 – Letter of the Secretary of the Treasury, Transmitting, in response to Senate Resolution of February 8, 1882 p.2
[17] 1895 Congressional Series Set Salaries, Treasury Department, p. 290 (among others years too)
[18] 47th Congress, First Session, Senate, Ex. Doc No. 135 March 15 1882 – Letter of the Secretary of the Treasury, Transmitting, in response to Senate Resolution of February 8, 1882 p.1
[19] 47th Congress, First Session, Senate, Ex. Doc No. 135 March 15 1882 – Letter of the Secretary of the Treasury, Transmitting, in response to Senate Resolution of February 8, 1882 p.4
[20]Report on the Internal Commerce of the United States. (1886). United States: U.S. Government Printing Office. P. 211 https://www.google.com/books/edition/Report_on_the_Internal_Commerce_of_the_U/h3bVAAAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
[21] Annual Report of the Light-House Board for FY ending June 30, 1900
[22] Mary Doxey donation to Outer Banks Conservationists, 2023
[23] Annual report of the Light-House Board to the Secretary of the Treasury for Fiscal Year ending June 30 1881 (Body’s) LIGHT-HOUSES p. 40 347-356. Beacon lights in North Landing River, Virginia, and Currituck Sound and North River, North Carolina, p. 40
[24] Annual report of the Light-House Board to the Secretary of the Treasury for Fiscal Year ending June 30 p. 40 347-356. Beacon lights in North Landing River, Virginia, and Currituck Sound and North River, North Carolina
[25] NARA – Philadelphia RG 26 – Long Point Light Station -1881 Proposed Boathouse for Tender Bramble –
[26]National Archives Online Catalogue: Identifier, 45694181 Local Identifier 26-LG-23-17A Record Group 26: Records of the U.S. Coast Guard Series: Lighthouses File Unit: North Carolina – Long Point Boat House District 5
[27] 1893 images taken by Herbert Bamber, surveyor for the US Lighthouse Board, digitized by Outer Banks Conservationists from slides it owns of the images
[28] The Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, Maryland) · 3 Jun 1881, Fri · Page 6
[29] Annual Report of the Light-House Board to the Secretary of the Treasury for FY ending June 30, 1893
[30] Images taken by OBC at NARA-Philadelphia of RG 26 Long Point Island – Duplex Dwelling of Long Point Light Keepers
[31] NARA – Washington DC, RG 26, Currituck Beach Lighthouse logs: May 18, 1894
[32] Annual Reports 1905 & 1907
[33] Personnel records, NARA St. Louis
[34] Doxey donation
[35] Washington times, March 17, 1895, p1
[36] The Wilmington Morning Star 13 March 1895 Wed P. 4, the Baltimore Sun 16 March 1895, Sat, p.1′ Washington times, March 17, 1895, p1
[37] “In 1915, there were my grandmother, Clara, and four small children all under the age of 10, Julia, William Bond (my dad), Mary, and Lomax Gwaltney.”
[38] Donated by Dr./Reverend Thomas Hill Sawyer on March 15, 2011 in memory and in honor of Rev. William Bond Sawyer and his son William Bond Sawyer, Jr., B. June 17, 1943. D. January 22, 2011.
[39] NARA – St. Louis Personnel Records William Tate
[40] OPENPARKSNETWORK pics, 1940s 134 and 135
[41] Oral account, Bob Beske who lived in Corolla in the late 1950s in 2022 told OBC, ““I knew the guy who came to build landing strip [sometime between 1956-1958]; he was staying in one of the houses at the lighthouse which I remember because I was excited to climb the lighthouse but it turned out we couldn’t access the lighthouse. And then a big storm came through and wiped the landing strip clean…”
[42] Lloyd Childers, Currituck Beach Lighthouse Keeper, OBC 1997-2003
[43] https://www.realty.com/commercial-listings/358376830/181-Coinjock-Canal-Road-Coinjock-NC-27923
[44] https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/0-Long-Point-Is-15-Barco-NC-27917/2057664654_zpid/
[45] https://www.thecoastlandtimes.com/2019/12/12/currituck-commissioners-amend-udo-vote-on-island-development/
