Height of tower: 165 feet, 156 to focal plane, Year Completed: 1859, Signal Distance: 19 Nautical Miles, Signal Pattern: 1 white flash every 15 seconds. Congress authorized a lighthouse at Cape Lookout as early as 1804 but the tower was not completed until 1812. It was a brick inner tower with a wooden exterior and was painted around 1832 in red and white horizontal stripes. According to historian F. Ross Holland, the tower had a focal plane "approximately 96 feet above the ground and 104 feet above sea level. Much like the first Cape Hatteras Lighthouse built in 1803, mariners complained of almost running aground looking for the light. Its light consisted of thirteen argand lamps, each with a twenty-one inch reflector intended to help throw the light further across the water. These lamps' wicks were difficult to keep trimmed and often smoked up the lantern room while burning, thus rendering the light dim. It took a dedicated keeper to keep the light as bright as it could be. In 1856 a Fresnel lens was installed in the Cape Lookout Lighthouse. The Fresnel lens grouped hundreds of prisms that reflected and refracted the light into a more intense beam. Though the light was of greater intensity, the need for a taller tower remained. In 1857 the government ordered a new, taller tower be built and it was completed in 1859. At an impressive 150 feet tall, it was the first successfully built tall, coastal light constructed in North Carolina under the direction of WHC Whiting, Army Corps of Engineers. Following the Civil War, all other tall, coastal lights built in North Carolina would take on a similar construction design. The present Cape Lookout Lighthouse has guarded ships from the dangerous Cape Lookout Shoals since 1859.

Its companion, the red and white banded 1812 tower remained its companion as a distinct daymark for nearly ten more years. During the Civil War there was damage to the Fresnel lens by Confederate soldiers, as there was to nearly every southern light along the Virginia and North Carolina to Florida coasts. Repairs were accomplished and the light burned for all but a short time, being relighted in 1863 with an interim third-order Fresnel lens. The Lighthouse Service appropriated money for a new keeper's dwelling in 1872. The "new" tower received its distinguished black and white checkers in 1873, the same year the 1870 Cape Hatteras tower received its black and white stripes and the brand new Bodie Island received its black and white bands. These lighthouses would be recorded in history as the nation's leading examples of maritime daymarks as well as coastal lights. Cape Lookout can be reached by boat or ferry. For more information call (252) 728-2250.