Point of Shoals Lighthouse 

Point of Shoals Lighthouse - National Archives 1885

Point of Shoals Lighthouse - National Archives 1885

Point of Shoals Light House first exhibited its light February 6, 1855. It had a 20 foot square foundation on 5, 5" diameter iron screwpiles. The cottage was also 20" square, single story with an internal step ladder leading to the lantern room. The lantern was fitted with a steamship lens. The lighthouse marked the edge of the last shoal in Burwells Bay, where the narrow channel took a sharp turn to the northeast across the James.

Confederates raided and extinguished the lighthouse early in the Civil War. In June 1862, the light was again exhibited. In September 1862, it was shutdown by the Lighthouse Board because of continuing rebel activity and because the war effort had moved to Northern Virginia. The light was again exhibited with a 6th order Fresnel lens in 1865. Then, in 1871, after severe ice floe damage, the lighthouse was also rebuilt as a new hexagonal light that marked the shoal for 60 years. Automated in 1932 and deactivated a year later, the structure was dismantled in the 1960s. The foundation remains in place.

Keepers

  1. Thomas L. Kendall - Sept. 2 1854 to Civil War

  2. Thomas L. Kendall - October 4 1865 to February 19, 1868

  3. William M. Dickens - February 19, 1968 - July 11 1870

  4. H K W Ayres - July 11, 1870 - November 7, 1870

  5. James Minson - November 7, 1870 - December 6, 1870

  6. William T. Hatsel - December 6, 1870 - May 25, 1872

  7. Patrick Murphy - May 25, 1872 - August 8, 1872

  8. Patrick Ryan - August 8, 1872 - October 29, 1872

  9. Cornelius Merton - October 29, 1872 - April 5, 1873

  10. W. Washington - April 5, 1873 - September 24, 1881

  11. Peter F. Blount - Sept 24, 1881 - July 1, 1885

  12. Thomas H. Curtis - September 1, 1885 - December 1924