Absecon Lighthouse

The land around Absecon Inlet was long the territory of the Lenape people, whose descendants today include the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape and other Lenape communities of the region. The name Absecon comes from a Lenape word for the place, and Native fishing and shellfishing camps once dotted these barrier islands long before the resort town grew up around them.

By the middle of the 1800s the shoals off Absecon Island had claimed a long list of ships, and Jonathan Pitney, the physician often called the father of Atlantic City, lobbied Congress for a lighthouse. It was designed by George Meade, an army engineer who would later command Union forces at Gettysburg, and its light first shined in January 1857. The tower guided coastal traffic for decades until shifting sands and new navigation methods made it obsolete, and it was retired from service in the early 1930s.

After years of neglect the lighthouse was restored and reopened as a museum, its original lens back in place and its keeper's dwelling rebuilt. Today it stands as a preserved landmark run by a nonprofit and the city, a survivor from the era before the boardwalk and the casinos.

The climb is the heart of a visit. A cast-iron spiral staircase winds up the inside of the brick tower, past small windows that frame the neighborhood and the sea, to an open gallery deck near the top. From there the view takes in the Atlantic City skyline, the long ribbon of the Boardwalk, the inlet where fishing boats run, and the ocean stretching to the horizon.

Near the top sits the tower's great treasure, a first-order Fresnel lens, a beehive of hand-ground glass prisms taller than a person that once concentrated the flame of an oil lamp into a beam visible far out to sea. It is one of only a small number of such lenses still standing in their original towers in the United States, and seeing it up close is a reminder of the craft that went into these lights.

At the base of the tower stands a reconstructed keeper's house, furnished to show how a lighthouse keeper and his family lived in the late 1800s. Keepers here worked in shifts to tend the light through the night, hauling oil up the stairs and keeping the lens polished, a demanding and lonely job on a barrier island that flooded in storms.

The grounds tell the wider story of the coast and the town that grew beside the light. Exhibits trace the wrecks that prompted the tower's construction, the lives of the keepers, and the rise of Atlantic City from a quiet seaside village into a booming resort connected to Philadelphia by rail.

Absecon Island sits on the great Atlantic Flyway, and the marshes and beaches around the inlet draw shorebirds, gulls, terns, and migrating songbirds through much of the year. Just to the north lie the back bays and salt marshes that make this coast one of the richest stretches of birding on the East Coast.

Summer is the busy season, when the beach and boardwalk fill and the tower climb comes with a warm sea breeze at the top. Spring and fall bring cooler air, thinner crowds, and strong bird migrations. Winter is quiet and often windy, with the striped tower standing stark against gray skies, and the light open on a reduced schedule.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.