Cape May Lighthouse
lighthouse in New Jersey, United States
The Cape May Lighthouse is a lighthouse located in the U.S. state of New Jersey at the tip of Cape May, in Lower Township's Cape May Point State Park. It was built in 1859 under the supervision of U.S. Army engineer William F. Raynolds, was automated in 1946, and continues operation to this day.
Cape May Lighthouse is the third fully documented lighthouse to be built at Cape May Point. The first was built in 1823 and the second in 1847. The exact locations of the first two lighthouses are now underwater due to erosion. There are 199 steps to the top of the Lighthouse. The view from the top extends to Cape May City and Wildwood to the north, Cape May Point to the south, and, on a clear day, Cape Henlopen, Delaware, to the west. Within immediate view are Cape May Cove and Battery 223, a harbor defense battery originally built during World War II. Cape May Lighthouse was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 12, 1973.
The Cape May Light is located in Lower Township, but is also a point of identity for Cape May Point as it uses the lighthouse as a logo for municipal-owned vehicles. Mayors of the two municipalities previously had a conflict over in which municipality it was located.
“Cape May Lighthouse” enters the record as lighthouse in New Jersey, United States. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cape, Lighthouse and lighthouse can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5034933. VIAF identifies the subject as 316594083. The Library of Congress control number is sh92006146. Authority coordinates are 38.933, -74.960. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1859, 1946, 1823 and 1847.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cape May Lighthouse” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.