Tangier Sound Lights: A.M. Foley

Tangier Sound Lights

by A.M. Foley

An unusual government offer almost went begging last summer. The General Services Administration initially found no taker in auctioning off the Hooper Island Lighthouse. Extending the bidding period finally produced a winning offer of $192,000. (For the moment, the buyer is unidentified.)

If that seems like a bargain to anyone, they may be confusing two different lights: Hooper Island and Hooper Straits Lighthouses. The ex-Straits light was of screw-pile construction, a cozy-cottage-type beacon, symbol of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, which barged and re-erected it in 1966 in St. Michaels, Maryland, 40 miles from its home waters at Honga River. Instead, last August’s GSA auction offered the Hooper Island Lighthouse, which still stands firmly in place, three and a half miles offshore west of Hoopersville.

The recently sold light’s construction is not screw-pile but caisson type, a more utilitarian design familiarly described as Sparkplug. Its foundation was sunk pneumatically to a depth of 13.5 feet and surrounded by 300 tons of riprap in 1902. Unlike 11 lighthouse cottages lost off their pilings to ice, this Sparkplug was built to last.

Chesapeake lights evolved off-

Hooper Strait Lighthouse Hooper Island Lighthouse