The original Brandywine Lighthouse built in 1850, utilizing a screwpile type construction, had proved successful, However, by the twentieth century, living conditions at the station were considered somewhat cramped compared to other offshore lights then being built. The sum of $75,000 was provided in 1911 for “rebuilding and improving the present light and fog signal at Brandywine Shoal on the present or adjacent site.” The decision was made to build a reinforced concrete lighthouse just fifty feet from the current light. The third-order Fresnel lens was transferred from the old to the new lighthouse where it was first lit on the evening of October 20, 1914. The two towers stood side-by-side for a while until the superstructure of the screwpile light was torn down. The platform surrounding the old light, however, was retained, and several structures, used by the Navy in the 1940s and 50s, were built thereon. To form a protective harbor near the light, a protective wall of riprap, forming almost a complete circle, was placed around the lighthouse in 1923. Brandywine Shoal Lighthouse was the last remaining manned station on Delaware Bay when it was automated in 1974 – an appropriate distinction for a station where the first screwpile design in this country was deployed, where one of the earliest lightships served, and where tests were conducted with the third Fresnel lens to be used in the United States.
Located in the Delaware Bay about 8.5 miles northwest of Cape May.
GPS: Latitude: 38.986232, Longitude: -75.113185
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