Cape Romain Lighthouses

Just three years after the lighthouse was completed, the Civil War began, and lighthouses along the Atlantic Coast went dark. The light at Cape Romain was restored in 1866.

On August 31, 1886, “The keeper was in his house when the shock came. A gradually increasing rumbling ‘sounding something like a battery of artillery or a troop of cavalry crossing a long bridge,’ was heard before the shock. In less than a minute came the shocks, the first one lasting about two minutes, the next one as long and at about two minute intervals. The shocks did the tower no injury but its vibration was great. About a thousand “cranes” nest on the Key during the summer months, and these were flying about ‘making a fearful noise,’ during the shock, (“A Descriptive Narrative of the Earthquake of August 31, 1886, by Carlyle McKinley.)

Opportunities for socializing were rare. Located seven miles from the mainland, isolation impacted every aspect of life for lighthouse families. Children had to be sent away to attend school. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, McClellanville’s villagers began holding “Cape Parties” on Lighthouse Island. They played games, swam, caught fish, and collected crabs and oysters, then they roasted their tasty sea treats on the beach.

Assistant keeper Hepburn Morrison (1893–1896), told his granddaughter, Judy Fortner, that “the girls loved” his uniform. To entertain visitors, he would climb to the top and stand on his head, with his legs wrapped around the lightning rod tip!

In 1932 Lighthouse Island, Cape Island, Raccoon Key, and thousands of acres of salt marsh and tidal creeks were included in the new Cape Romain Migratory Bird Refuge. At that time it was managed by the U.S. Biological Survey, now known as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

For many years, refuge employees have sought resourceful solutions to protect the lighthouses from the damaging winds, storms, and salt air, but time has taken its toll. Because national wildlife refuges are established to care for animals and their habitats, the funding the refuge receives is for habitat and species management, rather than historic preservation. When refuge employees linked their efforts with partner and supporter Tommy Graham, disintegration of the old lights slowed.

Graham, a local historic restoration professional, worked with a team of refuge staff and volunteers to repair and repaint the lighthouses in 1983. Today he is working with Glenn Keyes, historic preservation architect, and John Moore, structural engineer, to design a solution for the rusted and unstable spiraling steps and to stabilize the structural instability of the lantern room. Four guided tours a year are offered by Cape Romain NWR, with transportation provided by Coastal Expeditions Ferry.

Have you seen the Lights? from "Life in the Wild", Volume 5, Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge, at Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cape Romain Lighthouses.

• Lighthousefriends.com Cape Romain Lighthouses page
• Current pictures from the Beach Bum's site