Night Settles over Fenwick
The sun sets over the Fenwick Island Lighthouse in southeastern coastal Delaware
Night Settles over Fenwick
by Ellen Rice
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Fenwick Island Lighthouse first shined its protective beacon across the Atlantic, warning navigators away from the treacherous Fenwick Shoals just offshore, on August 1, 1859, after more than a century of political wrangling over boundaries.
There is a large white carved stone marker dated 1751 that bears the arms of Lord Baltimore on the south side and William Penn on the north. It is the first stone set up in connection with the Mason and Dixon line survey, and it is the only remaining of a series of stones laid every five miles to mark the line between what is now Delaware and Maryland and the division between north and south during the Civil War. Congress authorized the erection of a lighthouse on the barrier island of Fenwick, Delaware's most southern coastal town, in 1856. By 1857, the site for the lighthouse had been selected and marked and the tower was completed early in 1859. The total cost was $23,748.96. In 1932, a strip of land 60 ft. wide, extending east and west across the site, was deeded to the State of Delaware for roadway purposes (Rt. 54), and in 1940, about three-fourths of the site was sold, including the northern wooded half and 2.71 acres of the southern half - land former lighthouse keepers and their families once hunted and farmed. The tower is 83 feet above water and the top of the lantern 87 feet above ground. A 25,000-candlepower Fresnel light flashes white every 3 seconds and is visible 15 miles out to sea. Fenwick Lighthouse is still in operation, thanks to Friends of the Fenwick Island Lighthouse and the State of Delaware. My painting shows Fenwick Island Lighthouse from the vantage of the parking lot of Nick's House of Ribs in Ocean City, Maryland, at sunset. A century ago, that same vantage point would be in the ocean. The lighthouse has never been moved, contrary to what some people think, though the beach has. Fenwick is a shifting barrier island, its sands like the skies above ever moving. Enjoy. |
