Cape Lookout Light Station, Lighthouse, Cape Lookout, Carteret County, NC

Significance: Constructed between 1857 and 1859, the Cape Lookout Lighthouse is significant as the prototype of all lighthouses to be erected on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The Cape Lookout Lighthouse was the first of the great lighthouses erected along the North Carolina coast by the U. S. government during the mid-nineteenth century replacement of earlier, smaller lighthouses. The lighthouse was given a distinctive black-and-white-diamond pattern in 1873. It is a contributing resource to the Cape Lookout Light Station, which was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 as an important physical and historical maritime feature of the nineteenth century development of the Outer Banks.

The lighthouse is also a contributing resource to the Cape Lookout Village Historic District, which was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. The district, which contains twenty-one principal resources, is anchored by the Cape Lookout Lighthouse at the north end and by the former U. S. Coast Guard Station to the south. Sixteen of these resources the lighthouse, the life-saving buildings and structures, the circulation network, and the historic landscape contribute to the district's significance as a unique Outer Banks community that flourished as a fishing village and life-saving station from the 1870s to about 1920, and then endured as a resort for hardy vacationers until becoming part of the Cape Lookout National Seashore in 1966.
Survey number: HABS NC-203-A
Building/structure dates: 1857-1859 Initial Construction
Building/structure dates: 1867 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: 1950 Subsequent Work
Building/structure dates: 1976 Subsequent Work
National Register of Historic Places NRIS Number: 72000097, 00000692