For a century and a half, a lighthouse stood on the dunes at Cape Henlopen. Then the sand underneath it left.
A colonial light
The Cape Henlopen Lighthouse was completed in 1767 and first lit in 1769. Philadelphia's mariners had pressed for it: many ships had been lost in the waters around the cape, and the approach to the Delaware Bay needed a light. It was among the earliest lighthouses built in the colonies.
The Revolution
In 1777, during the American Revolution, the British nearly destroyed it. The wardens repaired the damage, and the light was burning again by 1784.
The sand
What the war could not finish, the shoreline did. By 1897 the dune around the tower was reported to be blowing away at three to five feet a year. In 1905 several tons of brush were laid around the tower and its oil house to keep the sand from drifting out from under the foundations and walls.
It was not enough. Shoreline erosion undermined the foundation, and the lighthouse was abandoned.
April 13, 1926
On April 13, 1926, the Cape Henlopen Lighthouse collapsed into the sea.
A state historical marker now tells its story. The lighthouse itself is gone, and so is the ground it stood on.
What the cape still says
Cape Henlopen is a moving landscape. The same park that lost its lighthouse to the sea is where The Point closes each spring for nesting shorebirds and reopens in the fall, and where the dunes are fenced and managed. The lighthouse is the clearest lesson in why: on this coast, the land does not stay where it is put.
Sources: U.S. Coast Guard Historian's Office, Cape Henlopen Lighthouse history (history.uscg.mil), for the 1767 completion and 1769 lighting, the mariners' petition, the 1777 damage and 1784 relighting, the erosion reports of 1897 and 1905, abandonment and the April 13, 1926 collapse; the Cape Henlopen Lighthouse historical marker (Historical Marker Database); the Cape Gazette's anniversary coverage of the collapse. The lighthouse's rank among colonial lighthouses differs across accounts and is described generally. Delaware Beach Finds did not visit the marker for this story.