Est. 1858 · Maritime History · Lighthouse Preservation · National Seashore · Barrier Island History
The barrier island off the south shore of Long Island has required a navigational marker since the earliest days of commercial shipping along the coast. The first lighthouse on Fire Island was a 74-foot tower completed in 1826, but its height and placement proved insufficient — ships continued to founder on the shoals. The solution was the current structure: a 168-foot brick and stone tower that began operation in 1858 and could be seen from a distance adequate for actual navigation.
For more than a century, the lighthouse operated under the authority of the U.S. Lighthouse Service and later the Coast Guard. The light guided ships through the passage between the Atlantic and the Great South Bay, a route that had claimed numerous vessels. Among those who died in the waters near Fire Island was Margaret Fuller, the writer and social reformer, whose ship ran aground off Point O' Woods in July 1850 — eight years before the current tower was even built.
The Coast Guard decommissioned the lighthouse in 1974. The building sat vulnerable for eight years until the Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society formed in 1982 with the explicit purpose of saving it. The society raised over $1.2 million in restoration funds, and on May 25, 1986, the Coast Guard returned the lighthouse to service as an active aid to navigation — a status it maintains today as a private aid operated by the preservation society.
In 2023, storm damage caused exterior panels to separate from the tower structure. After stabilization work, the tower reopened to visitors. The lighthouse is part of Fire Island National Seashore and accessible via ferry from the mainland.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Island_Lighthouse
- https://www.fireislandlighthouse.org/
- https://random-times.com/2020/01/14/fire-island-lighthouse-history-and-ghosts/
- https://www.nps.gov/fiis/learn/historyculture/margaret-fuller.htm
ApparitionsShadow figuresCold spotsPhantom footsteps
The legends attached to Fire Island Lighthouse fall into two categories with very different levels of historical grounding.
The more persistent story involves a lighthouse keeper whose daughter became gravely ill and died before he could get her to mainland medical care. Grief-stricken, the keeper reportedly hung himself in the tower. Staff members who have worked at the lighthouse over the years have reported a shadowy figure seen climbing the stairs and a general sense of a presence that doesn't match the building's current employees. Jonathan Gaare, Executive Director of the Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society, has stated that neither he nor any staff member has found documentation to validate the keeper story — it circulates as local legend without archival support.
A different narrative circles around Margaret Fuller, the nineteenth-century writer, critic, and women's rights advocate. Fuller died in July 1850 when the merchant brig Elizabeth ran aground off Point O' Woods, near Fire Island. She drowned along with her husband and infant son, and her manuscript — what may have been a history of the Italian revolutionary movement — was never recovered. The claim that her ghost walks the beach searching for her lost manuscript has circulated since at least the early twentieth century. Fuller died eight years before the current lighthouse was even built, making any direct connection to the structure a later narrative addition.
A January 2022 paranormal investigation at the lighthouse reportedly produced photographic and video material that investigators characterized as evidence of paranormal activity, though the nature and context of that evidence has not been independently reviewed.
Notable Entities
The KeeperMargaret Fuller
