Cape Lookout Lighthouse
1800 Island Road
Harkers Island
SOBX ~ Southern Outer Banks
Crystal Coast
Emerald Isle NC
2022

Horses of Shackleford Banks

Shackleford Banks, the southern-most barrier island in Cape Lookout National Seashore, is home to more than 100 wild horses. Venture out by boat or passenger ferry to enjoy the rare privilege of watching horses that live without the help of man. Appreciate the horses' tenacity and watch their social behaviors.

https://www.shacklefordhorses.org/about.htm


The Shackleford Banks wild horses are a unique historic and cultural legacy.

Historical research and genetics testing indicates that these wild horses descended from a core group of the old type of Spanish horses. One genetic factor, the blood variant Q-ac, is believed to be contributed by the Spanish horses of 400 years ago. This genetic marker has been found in only descendents of those Spanish horses. Easily lost through genetic drift, Q-ac has been documented in the Puerto Rican Paso Finos, the isolated mustang population of Montana's Pryor Mountains, and the horses of Shackleford Banks.

Though there's a big emphasis on keeping the bloodline pure and foreign horses out (Which is why you can't ride horses on the beach in the four wheel drive area) this makes for an inbreeding nightmare. In order to ensure the bloodline is diversified, a new stallion, Gus, was introduced from Shackleford Banks in 2014. The wild horses in Shackleford are genetic matches to the ones in Corolla. However, while the Corolla horses came from only one maternal line, the horses in Shackleford come from three. This ensures that the bloodlines will stay diverse enough to not have inbreeding issues.

Cape Lookout Lighthouse is an aid to navigation, a symbol of home, a vacation spot, a place of work, and a welcome beacon for visitors coming to Cape Lookout National Seashore. Thousands of visitors cross the sound every year to visit Cape Lookout, and to explore the surrounding seashore.

https://www.nps.gov/calo/planyourvisit/lighthouse-visits.htm

In early 2021, NPS staff conducted a regular pre-season safety inspection of the lighthouse. That inspection noted several concerns related to structural components such as stairs and handrails. Structural engineers were brought out to perform more in-depth inspections, resulting in a list of suggested repairs.
While the lighthouse is not in any peril, a full restoration will help protect it into the future and ensure that visitors can safely climb it for decades to come. This project includes repair or replacement of metal stairs, handrails, landings, glass panes, windows, doors, and other materials. For the first time since 1873, the lighthouse will be stripped to bare brick and repainted with a breathable paint to help stabilize the moisture content of the bricks.
The project is comprehensive and is expected to take several years to complete. Currently, we are hopeful that construction will begin sometime in late 2024. Once construction begins, we will have better understanding of when lighthouse will reopen for climbing.

Before you leave the lighthouse, don’t forget to stop by the Lighthouse Keeper’s House. This house was built in 1873. When Cape Lookout was operated by the Light House Service, Keepers lived on Core Banks with their families. Today, the bottom part of the house operates as a museum staffed by volunteers. The Keeper's Quarters is open from mid-March to the end of October.

Besides seeing the lighthouse, you can walk around the boardwalk, searching for plants and animals native to the seashore. From early May through early August, monarch butteries are swarming the bushes on the path. Be careful where you step! Have you never seen the ocean before? Walk to the end of the boardwalk, to the pedestrian beach to relax to the sound waves crashing. This part of the beach is closed to vehicle driving, making it a perfect destination to build sand castles and search for seashells. While walking to the ocean, don’t forget to look for the foundation of the original 1812 lighthouse. Between the current lighthouse and the boardwalk, look for a large mound of sand. There, you will find a pieces of concrete and bricks. Remember, it is illegal to remove any artifacts from the seashore. You are only allowed to take seashells and pinecones!

The Cape Lookout Lighthouse is a 163-foot-high lighthouse located on the southern Outer Banks of North Carolina. It flashes every 15 seconds and is visible at least 12 miles out to sea and up to 19 miles. It is one of the very few lighthouses that operate during the day. It became fully automated in 1950. The Cape Lookout Lighthouse is the only such structure in the United States to bear the checkered daymark, intended not only for differentiation between similar light towers, but also to show direction. The center of the black diamonds points in a north-south direction, while the center of the white diamonds points east-west.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Lookout_Lighthouse

It is the second lighthouse that has stood at this location, and is nearly identical to the Bodie Island Lighthouse, which has horizontal stripes, and the Currituck Beach Lighthouse, which is unpainted red brick. The more famous Cape Hatteras Lighthouse bears spiral stripes. The first lighthouse at Cape Lookout was completed and lit in 1812 at a cost of more than $20,000, which Congress authorized in 1804. It took eight years to build. It was the fourth lighthouse to be built in North Carolina and was a 96-foot-high brick tower with wooden shingles painted with red and white horizontal stripes. However, it proved to be too short to light the treacherous Lookout Shoals, which were nicknamed the "Horrible Headland."

The present lighthouse was completed and lit on November 1, 1859 at a cost of $45,000, which Congress approved in 1857. This lighthouse used a first-order Fresnel lens which allowed the light to shine brighter. On May 20, 1861, North Carolina joined the Confederacy and all of the lenses were removed from the coastal lighthouses and navigational beacons to prevent Union forces from using the lights to navigate the coast. Union troops captured the nearby Beaufort and Morehead City in 1862 and, by the end of the next year, a third-order Fresnel lens was installed in the Cape Lookout lighthouse. On April 2, 1864, a small group of Confederate troops under the command of L.C. Harland snuck through Union lines and out to the lighthouse. Their attempt to blow up the lighthouse was unsuccessful, however the explosion did destroy the lighthouse oil supply and damaged the iron stairs. With iron unavailable during the war, the damaged sections of the stairs were replaced by wooden ones. The Fresnel lenses from all the North Carolina lighthouses were found in 1865 in Raleigh. The lenses were shipped back to their original manufacturers to be checked out and repaired. In 1867, the temporary wooden stairs were replaced when iron once again became available after the war and the original first-order Fresnel lens was reinstalled.

In 1873, the lighthouse was painted in its distinctive black and white diagonal checkerboard, or diamond, pattern. There are those who believe the Cape Hatteras Light and the Cape Lookout Light paint schemes were reversed. This belief arose since the Cape Hatteras Light protects ships from Diamond Shoals and should therefore have the diamond pattern. However, the daymark patterns were randomly assigned and there is no evidence to suggest that the Cape Lookout and Cape Hatteras patterns were switched. Diamond City, a community that once stood on the eastern end of Shackleford Banks, was named after the daymark pattern on the nearby Cape Lookout Lighthouse.

The lighthouse is part of the Cape Lookout National Seashore and can only be accessed by private ferry. During the summer, the Cape Lookout Light Station Visitor Center and Keepers' Quarters Museum are open. Though tower climbs were suspended in February 2008, the lighthouse opened for climbing permanently July 15, 2010. The regular season lasts from mid-May to mid-September each year. During the open season, visitors are allowed to climb the 207 steps to the top of the lighthouse.