The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum is participating in the September 19 -20, 2015 Maryland Lighthouse Challenge, with its 1879 Hooper Strait Lighthouse as one of nine Chesapeake lighthouses featured in this year’s tour.
Sponsored by the Chesapeake Chapter of the U. S. Lighthouse Society, the challenge is a bi-annual “road rally” held in September at participating lighthouses and lightships along the Chesapeake Bay. Other participating lighthouses for this year’s challenge include Concord Point, Seven Foot Knoll, Choptank River, Drum Point, Cove Point, Piney Point, Point Lookout, Fort Washington, along with the Lightship Chesapeake. Bonus lighthouses include Millers Island, Sandy Point Shoal, and Blackistone.
Individuals and groups are encouraged to participate by visiting all 9 lighthouses and the lightship, collecting specially-designed commemorative souvenirs from each. Participants can visit any number of lighthouses along the challenge route, but will have to visit all mandatory stops to collect a specially designed souvenir to mark the accomplishment.
The Hooper Strait Lighthouse, now standing on Navy Point, was originally built in 1879 to light the way for boats passing through the shallow, dangerous shoals of Hooper Strait, a thoroughfare for boats bound from the Chesapeake Bay across Tangier Sound to Deal Island or places along the Nanticoke and Wicomico Rivers. Saved from demolition, the lighthouse was moved by barge to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Md. in 1966, one year after the non-profit museum opened. It now serves as a hands-on exhibition that explores the life of a lighthouse keeper, and a venue for CBMM’s Lighthouse Overnight Adventures program for youth groups.
As a “screwpile” lighthouse, it is built on special iron pilings which were tipped with a screw that could be turned into the muddy bottom for a depth of 10 feet or more. The Museum’s lighthouse is the second lighthouse constructed at Hooper Strait – the first one was destroyed by ice in 1877.
This 2015 Maryland Lighthouse Challenge has a special focus on lighthouse architecture. For more information about the challenge, visit www.cbmm.org or www.cheslights.org.
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The Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum’s 1879 Hooper Strait Lighthouse, shown here under a double rainbow, is one of ten stops on the 2015 Maryland Lighthouse Challenge, which takes place on September 19 & 20, 2015. Sponsored by the Chesapeake Chapter of the U. S. Lighthouse Society, the challenge is a bi-annual “road rally” held in September at participating lighthouses and lightships along the Chesapeake Bay. The Hooper Strait Lighthouse, now on Navy Point, was originally built in 1879 to light the way for boats passing through the shallow, dangerous shoals of Hooper Strait. Saved from demolition, the lighthouse was moved by barge to the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Md. in 1966, one year after the non-profit museum opened. For more information, visit www.cbmm.org or www.cheslights.org.