Saturday brought relief from the cold snap we’ve been suffering through for the last month. Time to go do something outside! After throwing around a couple of ideas, we settled on Sandy Hook. Near the northern tip is Fort Hancock, home of the oldest working lighthouse in the United States.
This visit, the building was open and free tours were available. On the half-hour, you can walk up the narrow spiral staircase to the top. Along the way, small windows let you see out.
Before the top landing the staircase ends and you have to use this ladder. The hatch is just wide enough for me (not an especially big guy) to squeeze through. I had my camera bag over my shoulder and it got caught up, and I had to back down a little to move it around.
At the top is the lantern, two 1000-watt bulbs inside a third-order Fresnel lens. While not quite as awesome as the first-order lenses at the nearby twin lighthouses, it’s still a nice piece of work.
The light is visible for almost 20 miles. Yet you can stand next to it, even look into it, comfortably.
Looking through it gives some fun abstract views.
When Sandy Hook Light was built in 1764, it was just 500 feet from the shoreline. Today, 246 years of littoral drift have “moved” it one and a half miles inland.
The late afternoon sun cast long shadows of the lighthouse.
Just across the green, one of the former officers’ homes is a museum. The rooms are preserved in their period decor. Here’s the office. Newspapers announce D-Day (chair on the left) and the bombing of Pearl Harbor (table, right).
The kitchen has period-era appliances as well, including this General Motors-made refrigerator…
…and this stove.
