Lighthouses Map: 20 Maps of Keepers, Lightships and Lost Lights

Lighthouse maps tend to be lists of lights collected one at a time. One writer has touched light after light around Britain since 2018 and written a diary entry at each; a Japanese catalogue numbers about 7,300 lights down to the breakwater lamps, each with its flash pattern. Others follow a photographer’s route of 1893, track where the old lenses ended up, collect stamps, or list the lighthouses where you can still spend the night as a keeper.

1. UK Lighthouses Map: A Diary at Every Light Touched

   “07/07/26 Cape Wrath. The end of the world. The minibus driver crunches through the gears.” The project began with a 16-mile walk to Berwick-upon-Tweed in October 2018, and each light touched since is a dated diary entry, short and closely observed. At Buckie North Pier, Psalm 107 is laminated and pinned to the harbourside noticeboard next to a stick figure falling from the breakwater; at Shepperdine on the Severn, the leading lights flicker through the windows of a small tin church with room for three pews. Breakwater ends, range lights and Martello towers count as much as the great towers, and a layer of lights still to touch includes Souter, Roker and the Gull Lightship on the Thames.

   

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2. Japan Lighthouse Map: Firsts, Meiji Lights and Visits

   Japan’s records sit in one layer: Kannonzaki, the first Western-style lighthouse; Kashinozaki, the oldest in stone; Sugashima, the oldest in brick; Kurasaki, the oldest in concrete; and Himesaki, the oldest in iron. Muroto Misaki has the longest range and the strongest light, and the list runs out to the extremes, from Soya Misaki in the far north to Nishizaki in the far west and the light on Okinotorishima. Further layers sort Japan’s lights by what you can do with them (climbable towers, ranges of 15 nautical miles or more, the 64 Meiji-era lights, the 50 selected lighthouses), and a visit log notes whether the light was on, as on the second visit to Himesaki on 19 April 2025.

   

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3. Lighthouses of the World Map: IALA's 100 Historic Lights

   In 1998 the International Association of Lighthouse Authorities picked 100 lighthouses of historic importance, and this map places them by continent: 60 in Europe, 20 in Asia, 14 in Africa, 13 in South America. The Asian list starts with Chinese pagodas that served as lights, the Maota tower and both towers of the twin pagodas on Jiangxin islet, and goes on through Korea’s Palmido and Homigot to Singapore’s Horsburgh and Raffles lighthouses. Africa runs from Robben Island and Cape Agulhas to Cotonou and the Mamelles in Dakar; Japan’s five are Inubosaki, Mikomotojima, Mihonoseki, Izumo Hinomisaki and Himesaki.

   

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   130130 points

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4. 1893 Lighthouse Photography Map: Herbert Bamber's Route

   Herbert Bamber photographed American lighthouses in 1892 and 1893, and this map rebuilds his route from his numbered notes, from Isle of Shoals on the New Hampshire coast (Bamber LH #1) along the Gulf and the Atlantic coast to Lake Superior and on to the Pacific. The notes are research in progress: “(Bamber LH #15???) Possibly 13?” at Pensacola, “Location uncertain…” at Long Point, and at Cape Fear the remark that the photos actually show Old Baldy. Where the dates are known, they are exact: 30 May to 1 June 1893 at Cape Hatteras with 8 photographs, one of them of the beacon on Cape Point. Avery’s Rock Light, photographed three times, was razed in 1947.

   

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5. Lightship and Sea Lighthouse Map: 496 Lights and Their Careers

   The Sandettie was the sixth and last lightship to serve France: 47.5 metres long, a crew of 8 relieved every two weeks, in service from 1949 until it was switched off in 1989. Hippolyte18 gives the lightships a layer of their own and fills the 496 entries with each light’s career, its pattern, range, steps and the year it was automated. Ar-Men, built from 1867 to 1881 on a rock off the Breton coast, was called “the hell of hells” by its keepers. Grand Jardin was destroyed in 1944 and lit again in 1949, and Falsterbo in Sweden had a tipping light (“bascule à lumière”) as early as 1636.

   

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6. Lighthouse Stays Map: 64 Lights to Sleep In

   Execution Rocks off New York, the Frying Pan Shoals tower off North Carolina, the Brandy Pot islands in Quebec: each of these 64 pins in the United States and Canada is a lighthouse that takes overnight guests, with the booking page attached. Some are hostels, such as Pigeon Point and Point Montara in California, some keepers’ apartments let through vacation rental sites, and Thirty Mile Point in New York is booked through a state-park campground. The list runs from Cape St. Elias in Alaska to Fort Amherst at St. John’s, Newfoundland.

   

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7. Japan Lighthouse List Map: 7,300 Lights by Number

   Number 0001 is Shirakami Misaki at the southern tip of Hokkaido: alternating white and red flash every 30 seconds, light 37 metres above the sea, range 17 miles, a white tower with two red bands. Each of the 4,462 entries in this catalogue, in eight files that run to number 7,300, records the same facts down to the smallest harbour lamp. Decimals fit further lights between the numbers, such as 0049.7 for the east breakwater light at Oshamanbe; a steel company’s leading light at Muroran harbour has a number of its own, and lights that have gone out are marked as discontinued.

   

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   4,4624,462 points

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   JapanRussian Federation

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8. Philippines Lighthouse Map: 35 Historic Lights and Ruins

   The lighthouse at Jolo port, established in 1879, has been converted into a mosque, the Masjeed Shariful Hashim, known as the Lighthouse Mosque. This survey of 35 historic lighthouses in the Philippines records each one’s founding and present state: Manila’s of 1642, demolished and rebuilt to a heavily modified design in 1992; Corregidor’s of 1853, rebuilt after the Second World War; Cape Bojeador of 1892, a National Cultural Treasure. Many old towers now stand inactive beside a modern one, Linao Point was destroyed by typhoons in the late 1980s, and the Bagacay Point tower of 1857 is in ruins next to its replacement of 1908.

   

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   3535 points

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9. Lighthouse Plans Map: France's National Archives Drawings

   Stéphane Rodriguez-Spolti has placed the lighthouse plans of the French National Archives on the map, each with its archive number and often the drawing itself: Cordouan between 1822 and 1861, the Mont d’Agde light from 1813, the lightship Snouw off Dunkirk in 1896. The engineers’ files went beyond France, with layers for the lights of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, a lighthouse on Cap-Vert in Senegal in 1863, and a lighthouse of 1813 on the island of Tholen, when the Netherlands belonged to the French Empire. Plans of American lights such as Newport News in Virginia and the Delaware Bay sit in the same series.

   

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10. British Lighthouse Map: Where the Old Lenses Went

    The optic of Tarbat Ness is in the National Maritime Museum, the arc lamp of South Foreland in the Science Museum, and the Longstone optic in Thinktank in Birmingham. This map of the British Isles is about where lighthouses can be seen up close, and much of it follows lenses and mechanisms into museums: the Bressay mechanism in Shetland, the Covesea Skerries optic in Lossiemouth, the Rubha Reidh optic in Gairloch. It also finds the Roman Pharos at Dover Castle, the medieval tower of St Catherine’s Oratory, the Helwick lightship in Swansea and the shore station of Skerryvore at Hynish.

    

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11. Egypt Lighthouse Map: Alexandria to the Red Sea

    The layers sort Egypt’s lights by who built them: the site of the ancient lighthouse of Alexandria, the British lights of the 19th century before the Suez Canal, and the lights French companies built after it opened. Ras El Tin in Alexandria dates from 1848, a 55-metre stone tower banded black and white; Port Said’s lighthouse of 1869 was the first in reinforced concrete. On the Red Sea, the Daedalus reef light went up in 1860 to 1862, and the Brothers Islands light was established in 1883 for the safety of pilgrims sailing between Egypt and Mecca. Rachid’s lighthouse of 1870 had to be replaced in 1967 because of erosion.

    

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12. Lake Ontario Lighthouse Map: Where to See the Last Nine

    Several of the last nine lighthouses of Canada’s eastern Lake Ontario stand on islands, so this map gives two points for each: the light, and the spot to see it from. From one point on the shore you see Pigeon Island 16 km due south on the horizon and Nine Mile Point as well; Prince Edward Point and False Ducks Island are each in view from the other. Main Duck Island is 17.5 km due east, “very distant view in clear weather”. The notes add the practical side: landing on Scotch Bonnet Island is prohibited, Salmon Point is on private property, and Point Petre has both its 1967 tower and the site of the original of 1833.

    

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    1818 points

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    Canada

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13. Lighthouse Stamp Map: Japan's Keeper Stamps and Postmarks

    Japan collects its lighthouses as stamps, and this map shows where each kind waits. The keeper stamps lie in visitor houses, roadside stations and museums: Ashizuri’s at a footbath named after John Manjiro, Shirasu’s in the ferry waiting room for Aishima, with a request to come outside ticket hours. Further layers hold lighthouse seals in the style of temple goshuin, a stamp rally of the 16 climbable lighthouses from Shiriyazaki to Hennazaki, and 153 places with a scenic postmark that shows a lighthouse, among them a white postbox at Inubosaki whose mail gets the lighthouse postmark.

    

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14. Argentina Lighthouse Map: Patagonia to Antarctica

    Faro Primero de Mayo, in the Antarctic, was named a Historic Site and Monument under the Antarctic Treaty in 1972, and Faro Esperanza began in 1952 as an acetylene light on an 8-metre steel tower. Argentina’s lights run here by province from the Río de la Plata to Tierra del Fuego, and the notes are frank about their state: “Faro Caído” for fallen towers at Buen Suceso and Campana, “Apagado” for beacons gone dark. Claromecó, striped in five black and five white bands, has 278 steps; Faro Villarino was a manned light from 1911 to 1918 and became obsolete once newer markers went up.

    

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15. Lighthouse Keeper Map: 40 Places to Volunteer as Keeper

    You can still become a lighthouse keeper as a volunteer, and these 40 stations in the United States and Canada say where you would sleep. On Loggerhead Key in the Dry Tortugas it is the keeper’s dwelling, at Pointe aux Barques the assistant keeper’s house, on the Oregon coast at Bandon, Heceta Head and Cape Blanco an RV site. Michigan has the most, from DeTour Reef to St. Helena Island, and the National Park Service houses volunteers on the Apostle Islands, at Devils Island and Michigan Island, and on the Outer Banks.

    

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16. French Lighthouse Map: Phares, Semaphores and Boat Graveyards

    The lens of Port-la-Nouvelle was removed in November 1942 and its tower blown up in 1944; Roches-Douvres, 40 kilometres off the coast between Bréhat and Guernsey, is the last sea lighthouse built in France and the farthest from land. The layers of Kama Morbihan gather 280 lighthouses and harbour lights, from small breakwater lights like the red light at Saint-Quay-Portrieux (6 metres, range 2 miles) to Cabo de Palos in Spain and Nicolet in Quebec, many with a member’s photo. Other layers add the coastal semaphore stations and the boat graveyards of Brittany, such as Quelmer and the Magouër on the Ria d’Etel.

    

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17. Listed Lighthouses Map: England's Protected Lights

    Three lighthouses in England are listed Grade I: the Roman Pharos at Dover, Smeaton’s Tower in Plymouth and St Nicholas’ Chapel and Lighthouse at Ilfracombe. This map holds 122 entries of the Historic England list with their grades, 15 at II* and 91 at II, and 13 scheduled monuments, among them a medieval lighthouse forming the west tower of an oratory on St Catherine’s Hill on the Isle of Wight. Keepers’ cottages, a lighthouse on the north face of Southsea Castle (the castle “not included”) and the old South Pier lighthouse that now stands in Roker Cliff Park all make the list.

    

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18. California Lighthouse Map: Real Lights, Faux Ones and Old Lenses

    Forbes Island, a faux lighthouse in the Delta, originally stood at Pier 39 in San Francisco, and a replica of the Grays Harbor lighthouse stands at Lake Havasu. This map splits California’s lights into 49 “official” lighthouses and 20 “unofficial” ones, along with points of interest where the old lenses and stamps are kept. At Old Point Loma the assistant keeper’s house holds the lenses from New Point Loma and Ballast Point; Point Arguello is marked inaccessible, and Sugar Pine Point at Lake Tahoe makes the official list.

    

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19. Lighthouse Passport Map: Great Lakes Stamp Locations

    Stannard Rock, far out in Lake Superior, is “NOT OPEN TO PUBLIC, enjoy it from a safe distance”, so its passport stamp is kept at a conservancy office in Marquette and can be had by mail for a self-addressed stamped envelope and a $2 donation. This map tells collectors where each Great Lakes lighthouse keeps its stamp, 196 entries from Minnesota to New York and Ontario. White Shoal offers four designs, one of them the 1910 tower “without the stripes”; Round Island’s first design comes only by mail, and the National Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo stamps a cargo ship.

    

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20. World Lighthouse Map: A Russian List With a 3D Tour

    A Russian-language map of the world’s lighthouses, 1,638 objects, with each numbered point traced to its source in a Wikipedia list, Norway’s, Virginia’s or Australia’s. A layer for Ukraine marks the lights of the Black Sea and the Azov coast, among them the pairs of front and rear range lights that lead ships through the Dnieper-Bug estuary. Another, “Lighthouses in 3D”, starts a tour at Roter Sand in the German Bight and visits Penmarc’h, Créac’h on Ushant, the Isle of May, Montauk Point and Miraflores in Lima.

    

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