Sapelo Island Light, Historic lighthouse in McIntosh County, Georgia, US.
Sapelo Island Light is a cylindrical brick tower 20 m high, about 9.1 m in diameter at the base and 3.7 m at the top, with walls several feet thick at the bottom tapering to about two feet. It is painted white with three horizontal red bands, and the lantern is black. It stands near the southern tip of Sapelo Island.
The structure was designed in 1820 by architect Winslow Lewis and ranks among the oldest brick lighthouses in the country. It remained operational until 1905, when a new steel tower took over its function.
The lighthouse takes its name from Sapelo Island and serves as a reminder of the area's seafaring past. Visitors can see the structure from the shore and appreciate how crucial such towers were for guiding vessels.
The lighthouse is not open to visitors and can only be seen from outside. The island, a nature reserve, is reached by ferry, which runs Monday to Friday. The tower stands near the southern tip of Sapelo Island, within the Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve.
The 1905 replacement was a 100-foot pyramidal skeletal tower with a third-order Fresnel lens; in 1934 it was dismantled and moved to South Fox Island, Michigan. The 1820 brick tower stood inactive from 1905 until 1998, when it was restored to its 1890 appearance and relit with a modern light and lens.
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