Six years ago, in 2015, I went to the East Point Lighthouse in Heislerville on the Delaware Bay coastline at the southern end of New Jersey. It is a small but working lighthouse which somehow survived Hurricane Sandy but was in danger of the next major storm as the sea continually eroded a sandy beach less than 100 ft (30 m) away.
Here are a couple of pictures taken in 2015.
Yesterday, I went back to see the lighthouse. Over the past several years, the Maurice River Historical Society which has managed the lighthouse since 1972, has done its best to restore the lighthouse. It definitely looks much improved from the outside.
To try and deal with the real danger of beach erosion and flooding, in 2019 the state of New Jersey spent $460,000 installing giant sandbags called geotubes on the beach near the lighthouse.
Critics say that the geotubes are not high enough to prevent waves at high tide from spilling over and flooding the lighthouse. In a major storm, all bets are off, and anything could happen.
In the meantime, New Jersey authorities and the Maurice River Historical Society are in a contract dispute, and the inside of the lighthouse is closed to all. Visitors could still come and walk around the beach to look at horseshoe crabs in their annual mating rituals.
neihtn 
That is a fine looking lighthouse. It looks like something Edward Hopper would paint!
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Edward Hopper used to live in New York, and could have come to East Point Lighthouse, maybe a 4-5 hour drive away. 😉
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It’s a real treat to view this charming lighthouse again Mr. Hien. I do hope that it will continue to remain there for as long as possible.
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Thanks, Takami! I did not realize it’s been 6 years since I last saw this lighthouse, and will try to go there more often. It’s a 2.5 hours drive away.
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What a strange light house, it is quite untypically – we never saw a lighthouse like this before. Thanks for sharing its story. It’s nicely renovated.
Wishing you a wonderful weekend
The Fab Four of Cley
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
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Thank you very much for commenting!
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Wow, it’s a beautiful lighthouse. They did a nice job on the restoration. I hope it survives but it’s difficult to fight nature.
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I read that the inside was also renovated nicely, but of course could not go in to see it.
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Maybe it will open this summer. I hope a lot of things open this summer.
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They don’t look like they’d withstand another Sandy-strength storm, and rather unattractive, too. But I suppose they felt they needed to try something. CC is making lots of things challenging. Shorefront properties are prime targets.
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There are only 570 feet of geotubes, and they only partially cover the shoreline around the lighthouse. The sea comes over them regularly and salt water is killing some vegetation already.
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Only the beginning of changes to come.
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The lighthouse looks great
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It is rather small, but as long as the ships can see its light, that’s all that counts, right?
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The geotubes don’t look high enough, do they? Here, we used to use sand bags before a hurricane hit. Now, it’s pointless.
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They are real easy to climb onto, and the waves have been doing whenever there is even a minor storm. Thanks for commenting, Lois!
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Story teller with excellent pictures.
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Thank you!
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