The Beginning
The most recent efforts to save the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse are the culmination of more than three-quarters of a century of preservation efforts along the Hatteras Island beachfront. Time and again, the relentless pounding of the ocean closed in on the lighthouse, only to be met by a counter-offensive of erosion-control schemes that provided short-term gains, but little in the way of permanent protection.

The same natural forces of weather and water that had claimed the first Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, forcing engineers to destroy it after the completion of the new and current light in 1871, threatened to repeat the process. Only 50 years after it was completed, the lighthouse at Cape Hatteras was again in trouble.

The 1920s
By the early 1920s, the ocean had advanced to within 300 feet of the light. Some local residents built dunes and planted native shrubs and beach grasses in an effort to stem the tide. Although their effort provided a brief respite, by the early 1930s the ocean was once again on the move.

With the country firmly in the grip of the Depression, the Federal government brought the power of the Civilian Conservation Corps to bear on the problem. Workers built miles of wide sturdy dunes and planted thousands of trees and shrubs to help stabilize the eastern edge of the island chain.

For a while it seemed as though the battle had been won. But underneath the surface of the Atlantic, on the ocean bottom beneath the breakers, something sinister was happening.

Stabilization efforts such as dunes and vegetation interrupted the natural cycle of erosion and overwash that had helped maintain the islands for thousands of years. By holding the leading edge of the islands in place, the relentless action of the breakers chewed more deeply into the base of the island. The angle of beachfront drop-off slowly increased as the ocean continued to advance, resulting in the periodic loss of large segments of the beachfront as the angles finally reached the point of instability.

The 1930s
Despite more than a million dollars in beach nourishment and protection along the Outer Banks during the mid-1930s, the ocean was lapping at the base of the lighthouse. After a pair of back-to-back hurricanes in 1933, seawater actually entered the base of the tower, forcing the evacuation of the keepers’ families from the houses around the tower’s base. They would never return.

Faced with the impending loss of an important maritime markers, federal lighthouse officials opted to extinguish the Hatteras Lighthouse, erecting a temporary beacon on a steel tower about a mile-and-one-half inland on a wooded hill.

Disappointed that the landmark had been decommissioned, local residents again began fortifying the area in front of the lighthouse with vegetation and sand fencing, this time adding steel groins designed to trap and accumulate sand migrating along the beach in front of the tower.

Once again, beach nourishment efforts provided temporary relief from the ocean’s onslaught. At one point, the Atlantic retreated as much as 1,000 feet eastward, and U.S. Coast Guard officials, who had assumed responsibility for the light after absorbing the old Lighthouse Bureau in 1939, began to consider relighting the beacon.

The 1940s
In 1948, the Coast Guard, caretaker of the lantern, and the National Park Service, now owners of the Cape Hatteras tower and surrounding land soon to become the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, began a joint project to restore the lighthouse.

More than a decade of neglect had taken its toll on the Hatteras light. Windowpanes were broken in the rusting lantern room, the beautiful Fresnel lens had been damaged by souvenir hunters and paint peeled from its distinctive spiral bands.

The 1950s
Together, the two agencies worked to restore the Hatteras tower to its original condition. In January 1950, the lighthouse was again restored to full operation.

Three years later, the Cape Hatteras National Seashore was officially opened, complete with a new, two-lane highway stretching the length of the Hatteras Island and reinforced by more than 60 miles of protective dunes. Public interest in the Hatteras Light began to grow. The tower few had ever seen from land was now accessible to the American people.

The 1960s
The 1963 completion of the Bonner Bridge linking Hatteras Island with the mainland turned the trickle of visitors into a torrent.

Visitors flocked to the tower, eager to climb the 268 steps to the top for the breathtaking view of the cape and Diamond Shoals. For more than 40 years, the number of visitors has continued to climb, making it one of the most popular visitor destinations on the Outer Banks.

As interest and affection for the Hatteras Light grew, the same natural forces that had once advanced to the base of the tower were again gathering strength. Year by year, the ocean continued to creep forward. By the 1960s, the shoreline had once again crept dangerously close to the base of the tower.

Officials pumped more than 300,000 cubic yards of sand in front of the lighthouse in 1966, but it washed away almost immediately. In 1967, the park service used sandbags to fortify the beach in front of the lighthouse, an effort aided by the construction of three steel groins by the U.S. Navy to protect their base located just north of the lighthouse that was being threatened by the same natural erosion forces.

The 1970s
Even with the construction of the groins, the ocean advanced on the light. The situation grew more desperate. Additional beach nourishment in the early 1970s failed. In 1975 the Atlantic was less than 200 feet from the base of the tower.

The early 1980s
In 1980, with the ocean only 150 feet away, state and federal officials decided something more needed to be done. A local group, the Outer Banks Preservation Association, formed to help generate and coordinate support for preservation efforts. They gained the backing of North Carolina Governor James Hunt and U.S. Senator Jesse Helms.

Their efforts were joined by the newly created Save the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse Committee, formed by North Carolina entrepreneur and developer Hugh Morton. Morton succeeded in gaining the support of the North Carolina Travel Council that spearheaded a statewide campaign to save the light. School children donated nickels and dimes and large corporations made donations in the thousands of dollars.

By 1981 Morton’s group had a great sum of money but no new alternatives. They donated funds for the lengthening of the steel groins near the lighthouse and paid for additional sandbags. The group also began to press for the construction of additional groins along the beach in front of the lighthouse, but they discovered new obstacles in their path. Coastal geologists including Dukes University’s Orrin Pilkey, Jr., and Robert Dolan, Jr. from the University of Virginia, raised serious questions about the long-term effectiveness and impact of groins on ocean beaches.

The scientists’ data indicated that groins inevitably lead to increased erosion on the "downstream" side of the structure. Although sand may be temporarily built up on one side, erosion is permanently amplified on the other. The only solution, the geologists said, was to construct additional groins to counteract the erosional forces until the entire beachfront was armored. And, researchers pointed out, just such an effect could be seen along the beaches of New Jersey where groins stretched in an almost unbroken line from Sandy Hook to Delaware.

Scientists were also beginning to realize the unseen effect of groin construction. The unnatural steepening of the beach profile that had begun in the 1920s had been exacerbated by the construction of the 1967 groins. The slope of the beach in front of the lighthouse was now alarmingly high. The natural correction that would inevitably occur as the ocean and Hatteras Island returned to a state of equilibrium was now threatening to claim significant portions of Buxton beachfront property just to the north of the lighthouse.

Hatteras Island residents clamored for more sand and additional groins to protect their property, but over the decade since the Navy groins had been constructed, the political environment had changed. In the mid-1970s, North Carolina coastal management officials determined not to allow "New Jersey-fication" to occur along their state’s 300-mile shoreline, enacted tough prohibitions against any new beach hardening devices. Long, hard-fought years had gone into forming North Carolina’s coastal laws making groins and similar structures illegal.

The stage was set for the conflict incubating between those wanting to protect the lighthouse in place and those supporting alternative ideas. It would take more than 20 years to reach a resolution.

On Hatteras Island, park service administrators, faced with dramatically different opinions on how to proceed, called for a more in-depth study of the available problems and solutions at the Hatteras light. They reviewed a variety of alternatives including construction of additional groins, relocation of the lighthouse to safety, the erection of a concrete seawall around the base of the tower and letting the lighthouse become an island, and even allowing the lighthouse to fall into the ocean. At the time, the option to relocate the tower was first presented as a continuing process, with the tower moving in 100-foot increments away from the advancing ocean.

In 1982, the park service opted for the concrete perimeter, or seawall, also known as a revetment, as the solution to the problems facing the light. The project was estimated to cost $2 - $3 million to initiate, with a final price tag estimated at approximately $5.5 million.

But the move away from human intervention in coastal erosion problems that had begun at the North Carolina state House was also being played out at the national level. As the ponderous park service bureaucracy moved slowly towards construction of a revetment, laws restricting federal intervention against natural processes in a national seashore were enacted. Questions about propriety of the revetment project were raised. Planners continued to debate. The ocean continued to advance.

Time was running out.

The mid-1980s
As the park service struggled to find the appropriate solution to the problems facing the lighthouse, inventors were busy with a new scheme: the placing of artificial seaweed on the ocean floor in front of the lighthouse. Not long after the synthetic seaweed was placed on the ocean bottom in front of the lighthouse, a park service ranger was photographed with several of the six-foot-long, plastic fronds hanging limply across his outstretched arms, retrieved after the ocean spit them back upon the beach. Like other attempts to throw material in the path of the ocean, the seaweed efforts brought a brief respite, but the ocean was still dangerously close.

At about the same time, David Fischetti, a North Carolina structural engineer, began to question the decision to keep the ocean and lighthouse in place. Like a needed transfusion, he brought life to the idea that the lighthouse could be moved to safety. The estimated price tag in the mid-1980s was $3 - 5 million.

Fischetti’s plan quickly gained support from marine geologists, construction engineers, and architects from across the country. In 1986, the multi-disciplinary collection of researchers and scholars formed the Move the Lighthouse Committee to help pressure the park service to opt for relocation for the light.

The late 1980s
In 1987, although funding and final plans were underway for the revetment, park service officials decided to initiate a study by the National Academy of Sciences to review the lighthouse situation and recommend the best course of action. The following year, the NAS, after examining all the options, recommended the lighthouse be relocated.

In 1989, plans for the revetment ended and the park service announced it would follow the opinion of the National Academy of Sciences and begin plans for a move. The decision angered Morton and some members of the Save the Lighthouse Committee. The group turned on the park service, seeing them as opponents, rather than allies in the desperate battle to save the lighthouse.

At the same time, additional sandbags were placed around the base of the tower to buy time from the sea; attention now turned to the lighthouse itself.

The 1990s
In 1990, the park service appropriated nearly a million dollars to inspect and repair the lighthouse in preparation for the move. The company hired to do the work—International Chimney Corporation of Buffalo, New York – were experts in their field. They studied every aspect of the lighthouse’s construction, made the necessary repairs, and declared the lighthouse fit for the move.

Although everything was in place for the move, park service administration, under mounting pressure from Morton and his group, balked at the relocation idea. Bowing to the opposition, park service planners tabled plans for the move. Instead of relocating the lighthouse to safety, the fight with the sea was to continue.

Repairs were made to the three groins near the base of the light and more sandbags were placed in front of the tower for protection. Park officials began to seriously consider the construction of a fourth groin that could be placed just south of the other three in the area commonly robbed of sand by the other three hardened structures.

In 1995, led by Russell Berry, the new Cape Hatteras National Seashore superintendent, the park service requested a fourth groin as the first step in a three-step plan. As part of that plan, park service officials agreed to fund the move and remove the fourth groin once the lighthouse was moved to safety. But state coastal management officials, wary of weakening the state’s opposition to groins anywhere along the coast, remained unconvinced.

In 1996, the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management informed Berry that the state could not support the groin proposal because it would violate state prohibitions against hardened structures. With the ocean even closer than before, park service officials were running out of cards to play.

When news of the state’s preliminary refusal to allow the groin broke, local newspapers, the Outer Banks Lighthouse Society, and Cape Hatteras National Seashore officials pushed the issue to the forefront. Forced to weigh in on the issue, the state’s elected officials gradually signed on to support relocation.

North Carolina Senate President Pro Tempore Marc Basnight became instrumental in crystallizing initial support for the move, now estimated to cost approximately $12 million. Basnight called for a team of North Carolina State University professors to form an Ad Hoc Committee to study the plight of the lighthouse and confirm the conclusions of the National Academy of Sciences, now almost a decade old.

After visits to the lighthouse, a close review of the available information, and a much better understanding of the natural processes occurring at the lighthouse, the group issued a unanimous decision: If the lighthouse is to be saved for future generations, it must be moved. They also announced the tower ready to withstand the rigors of a move.

Also in 1997, Basnight spoke with President Clinton while he was on a visit to Raleigh. Basnight gave the President a Harbour Lights model of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse donated by the Outer Banks Lighthouse Society and asked for his support in moving the light. Clinton agreed, appointing his chief of staff, Erskine Bowles, to head White House efforts.

U.S. Senator Lauch Faircloth (R-NC), another strong supporter of the relocation project, sought and received $2 million in the 1998 federal budget to allow the park service to plan and prepare for the move. Once again, work began to move the lighthouse away from the breakers, now less than 130 feet away.

For the first time in its history, things were falling into place in favor of relocation. The park service was committed to the move, public officials were in favor of it, environmentalists advocated it, the lighthouse community applauded it, the budget supported it, and the ocean demanded it.

Most recently
In the autumn of 1998, all eyes focused on the 1999 federal budget negotiations. While North Carolina’s U.S. Representative Jones pushed for $4 million appropriation to help fund a $6.4 million fourth groin and beach nourishment project in the House, Faircloth continued to support the remaining $9.8 million appropriation requested by Clinton in the Senate. It would take the work of a House-Senate budget conference committee to ultimately decide the fate of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.

That decision came on October 16, 1998, when Faircloth announced that he had been successful in his efforts to secure the money for the move. The stage is now set to finally move the nation’s tallest brick lighthouse 2,900 feet to safety.

When the light is in its new location by June 1999, it will again be 1,600 feet from the ocean, just as it was when the lighthouse was completed in 1870. Scientists say the new spot will ensure the light’s continued survival for the next 100 years.

After more than 75 years of fighting the relentless Atlantic Ocean, Americans will gently slide one of their best known landmarks to safety.

"The angle of beachfront drop-off slowly increased resulting in the periodic loss of large segments of the beachfront."

"The park service was committed to the move, public officials were in favor of it, environmentalists advocated it, the lighthouse community applauded it, the budget supported it, and the ocean demanded it.