GREEN HILL LIGHT
The Delaware Breakwater
Rear Range lighthouse, better know locally as Green Hill Light, was
a navigation aid to ship master to help determine an exact location
as they came around Cape
Henlopen to enable them to
navigate shoals of the Delaware Bay. It was in use between 1881 and
1918 when shifting sand
changed the shoreline and the Green Hill Light was no longer usable
as am
navigational aid.
Located two miles NW of
Lewes on a slight elevation above the marsh, a Sussex county hill,
it
consisted of 100 foot high
steel tower fitted with a “3d order red light”, which was 108
feet above sea level . Along the side of it was a two story keepers
house. Between 1881 and 1889 a kitchen was added, also a red brick
shed for oil and a iron hand rail for the keepers safety for the
tower. 1910 saw
a one story block structire
for the assistant keeps. Shrubs and trees were set out in 1901, over
600 of them. The two story house was sold to Robert Arnell who
had it moved to his Old Landing farm.
Decommissioned in 1918 the
light was recycled, the lens and clockworks were moved to be used at
San Francisco 's 18th Lighthouse District. The steel
tower, disasembled and loaded on railway cars went to the west coast
of Floiad, for use on Gasparilla Island.
The property of Green Hill
was abandoned, overgrown, structures were left to deterioate, and
returned to the State of Delaware in 1930 which gave the land to
Lewes.
Source: Green Hill Light by
Gary Grunder, Volumer V, 1002 Journal of the Lewes Historical
Society.
Abstract by Harrison H,
November 2017.
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