The Long Beach Bar Light was built in 1871 as a “screwpile” lighthouse on the North Fork of Eastern Long Island, off Orient, New York. Because a screwpile lighthouse is a lighthouse that stands on thin piles that are screwed into a sandy bottom, many thought the lighthouse looked like a water bug, earning it the nickname “Bug Light.”
It wasn’t a screwpile lighthouse for long, however. The winter ice threatened to rip out the piles and so a breakwater was built around the base of the lighthouse foundation which was later additionally reinforced with a concrete caisson.
The lighthouse operated until 1948 when it was decommissioned. Then on July 4th, 1963, vandals set fire to the lighthouse, burning the wooden house structure and leaving only the foundation. Remarkably, in 1989, a community group led by the East End Seaport Museum, just across the bay in Greenport, Long Island, raised money to resurrect the lighthouse. A replica of the original structure was built in a local shipyard and carried by barge to the lighthouse foundation where it was lifted in place by a crane in 1990. The new solar-powered light was re-activated as a navigational aid in 1993.
Here is a brief video about the remarkable rise, fall, and resurrection of Bug Light.
useful information
Vandals are usually just misguided youth rather than genuinely malicious.
I’m glad that the local community rebuilt the lighthouse and hopefully those that started the fire realised as they grew older that what they did was very wrong.