Hillsboro Inlet Lighthouse

In 1855, the Army Corps of Engineers determined that the Hillsboro Inlet—a connector between the Intracoastal Waterway and the Atlantic Ocean—was a hazardous passage for ships. However, due to a lack of funds, Congress did not authorize construction of a lighthouse here until 1901. Five years later, the Hillsboro Inlet Lighthouse was built in Detroit and shipped 4,000 nautical miles to illuminate the inlet.

With a height of 147 feet, the lighthouse is one of the tallest on the East Coast, and stands apart from others with its distinctive iron skeleton framework and cast-iron roof with a finial. The lower third of the structure is painted white, while the upper two-thirds and the lantern are painted black. This scheme was chosen to aid sailors’ daytime visibility: The lower portion’s white stands out against trees, while the upper black section contrasts with the sky.

The Hillsboro Inlet Lighthouse’s second-order bivalve Fresnel lens was one of the most technologically advanced of its time when it was added to the lighthouse in 1907. It weighs a whopping 3,500 pounds and is made of 356 glass pieces that form a large diamond. In this way, the original vaporized kerosene lamp used for the lighthouse could refract and create a horizontal beam across the ocean. Today, Hillsboro Inlet’s lens is one of the few Fresnel lenses still actively rotating.

Also important to the lighthouse’s original construction was a mercury bath, which was used to float and rotate the massive lens. However, numerous dangerous spills during hurricanes eventually led lighthouse keepers to replace it with a ball-bearing rotation system. The keepers themselves certainly had ample reason to want a change, as tending to the bath over time gave many of them mercury poisoning.

Since 1997, the Hillsboro Lighthouse Preservation Society (HLPS) has been the steward of this beloved beacon, showcasing its history through educational events and public access tours. The society also succeeded in restoring and repairing the original Fresnel lens, now reactivated inside the lighthouse. Visitors to Hillsboro Inlet can stop by the HLPS Museum in Roy L. Rogers Family Park to learn even more about the lighthouse’s rich past.