How They Moved a Nearly 200-Foot Lighthouse Half a Mile

For more than a century, the tallest lighthouse in America barely had to think about the ocean. By the late 1990s, the ocean was the only thing anyone could think about.

A Beacon Built to Last

The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse first shone its light in 1870, on North Carolina's Outer Banks. Built from more than a million bricks, it became the tallest brick lighthouse in the United States, standing nearly 200 feet above the sand. When it was finished, the ocean was a comfortable 1,500 feet away.

The Sea Closes In

That distance did not last. Storms and shifting currents ate away at the shoreline decade after decade. At its closest, the Atlantic had come within 120 feet of the lighthouse's base. Engineers warned that a single major storm could topple more than a century of history into the sea.

The Move of the Millennium

In 1999, the National Park Service chose an option few thought was possible: pick the entire lighthouse up and move it. Workers separated the 4,830-ton tower from its foundation and set it onto a system of steel track beams and roller dollies. Hydraulic push jacks, clamped to the rails, inched the structure forward five feet at a time while sixty automated sensors tracked its tilt, vibration, and load transfer every step of the way.

Twenty-Three Days Later

The lighthouse began moving on June 17, 1999, and reached its new foundation on July 9, having traveled 2,900 feet, more than half a mile inland. It reopened to visitors that November. The new site put the tower 1,600 feet from the water, a buffer expected to hold for roughly a century. The American Society of Civil Engineers later named the relocation an Outstanding Civil Engineering Achievement.

The lighthouse still stands where it was left that July, its century-old brick without a single new crack from the move that many said could not be done.