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Tucked away near a park and canal in Edenton, North Carolina, is a lighthouse, now privately owned and far from its original offshore site where it served to guide ships up the Roanoke River to Plymouth. The 1886 lighthouse was virtually forgotten until it was rediscovered by area lighthouse buffs in the 1990s.
After its rediscovery, some local residents worked to have the lighthouse moved to the town of Plymouth, where they hoped it would serve as a tourist attraction and help revitalize a slumping downtown area. That plan never materialized, but a new project developed. A reproduction of the lighthouse’s 1866 predecessor will now be built in downtown Plymouth. The replica of the Roanoke River Lighthouse will house a lighthouse museum and will be joined by a river walk to the existing Port O’Plymouth Museum.
Plymouth, with its ideal location on the banks of the Roanoke River near Albermarle Sound, was an important shipping center in the 19th century. The town was made an official port of entry in 1805 and had 25 ocean-going sailing ships by 1806. In 1835 a three-masted lightship was stationed near the mouth of the river. The Civil War marked the end of service for the lightship.
When Union forces under Burnside invaded eastern North Carolina in 1862, the Confederates moved the lightship to Plymouth to prevent it from becoming a navigational aid for the Union Navy. They eventually scuttled it in the Roanoke River to keep it from falling into Union hands. Union officials had no idea where the vessel was sunk, so they were never able to recover it.
The light vessel was replaced in 1866 by a screwpile-type lighthouse with a lantern on the roof of the keeper’s dwelling. Despite the apparent security of being built on pilings screwed deep into the river bottom, the first Roanoke River Lighthouse was ill-fated. During an extreme freeze of the river in 1885, two of its pilings were cut through by ice and the structure fell into the water.
A new lighthouse was erected on an iron screwpile foundation in 1886. This structure had actually been built for Currituck Sound, but it was re-routed to the Roanoke River. The lighthouse, with a fourth order Fresnel lens and a fog bell, had an attached dwelling with two rooms on each of its two floors. Families lived at the station for several decades, but eventually the keepers commuted by boat from Plymouth.
A lessening of maritime activity led to the light’s decommissioning in the 1940s. The building was subsequently sold to a private individual. The same buyer purchased two other offshore lighthouses in the area and attempted to move them to the shore. Two of the structures never made it; they were lost forever in the sound. Only Roanoke River Lighthouse was safely relocated. It was sold to Emmett Wiggins, who successfully moved the structure on a barge. He eventually made the lighthouse his home in Edenton. Wiggins was a former tugboat operator who remembered seeing the Roanoke River Light from the water. The Fresnel lens remained in place in the tower after the move, and Wiggins sometimes switched on an electric light inside the lens.
The lighthouse remained out of sight and out of mind until the 1990s, when local history buffs realized that it represented the only remaining screwpile lighthouse of the 12 that originally stood in North Carolina waters. Emmett Wiggins suggested turning the building into a floating maritime museum, but officials of the Port O’Plymouth Museum favored the idea of moving it to Plymouth.
Wiggins agreed to sell the lighthouse to the museum, but he died before the deed had been signed. His heirs wanted a million dollars for the deteriorating building, ending any possibility of it being acquired by the museum. Eventually the museum and the Washington County Roanoke River Commission decided instead to build a replica of the original 1866 lighthouse as part of an extensive plan for the downtown area. Initial research indicated that the plans had been destroyed, but plans were eventually located.
The lighthouse replica will house the history, photos and local stories of the entire lifetime of the Roanoke River Light Station. There are plans to also portray the history of the Lighthouse Service in North Carolina, and the building will ultimately serve as a visitor welcome center for the developing North Carolina Lighthouse Trail. “With this project we can become the first stop on a tour of North Carolina lighthouses and the only one of this type,” says Harry Thompson, Curator of the Port O’Plymouth Museum and chairman of the lighthouse project.
The riverwalk project will span the length of Water Street, linking the new lighthouse to the Port O’Plymouth Museum. The museum houses memorabilia relating to the Battle of Plymouth in the Civil War, as well as a weapons collection that includes a swivel cannon bought in Austria by Benjamin Franklin.
And there’s yet another exciting component to the project. According to Harry Thompson, the 1835 lightship was located in 47 feet of water in the Roanoke River on the day before Hurricane Floyd in the fall of 1999. There are plans to raise the lightship and to put it on exhibit near the lighthouse. This will make Plymouth unique, with the lightship and 1866 lighthouse replica onsite, and the 1886 lighthouse only 20 minutes away.
The project has received $515,000 in federal funding. Architect Frank Harmon and his staff will create the replica, and members of the staff visited Plymouth in October 2000 to discuss the plans. Two public hearings must be held before any design work or construction can begin. It is hoped that the project will get underway in early 2001.
This story appeared in the
February 2001 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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