News

May 08, 2023

Landmark lighthouse fell after 127 years

Sangjib Min / Daily Press An errant sport fisherman crashed into the old

Sangjib Min / Daily Press

An errant sport fisherman crashed into the old lighthouse rocks at Grandview Beach in Hampton just before 9 p.m. on Monday, October 1st, 2007. According to Hampton Fire Marshal Anne-Marie Loughran, six adults and a dog were rescued in two- to three-foot seas, with a lifeline being thrown from to the stranded passengers from a rescue boat.

Daily Press Archive

This circa 1948 photo taken by Hampton resident Fred Case shows the ruinous state of the Back River Lighthouse after the decade of storms that followed its deactivation in 1936

Daily Press Archive

This 1931 photo shows the stranded Back River Lighthouse and its island of protective rip rap before the damage inflicted by the great August hurricane of 1933. Five years after the photo was taken, the threatened structure was deactivated after 107 years of service.

HAMPTON — Constructed on four acres of land in 1829, the landmark Back River lighthouse was a dicey proposition from the beginning.

A wide strip of marsh separated the site from the mainland, requiring builders to erect a 144-foot-long elevated footbridge in order to connect the light with the keeper's house and the rest of Grand View Island.

And despite his experience as a ship captain and designer of lighting apparatus, low-bidder Winslow Lewis of Boston didn't have the engineering and construction background needed to insure that the 30-foot-tall, $4,250 conical structure was soundly built, the Fox Hill Historical Society notes on its website.

Still, the tower that resulted stood for 127 years before it finally toppled on Sept. 26, 1956, in the high waves and 55-mph gusts brought to Hampton Roads by the remnants of Hurricane Flossy.

Though not nearly as damaging as several previous hurricanes and an April nor’easter, the storm also took down the nearby Grand View Ballroom, punctuating a series of painful poundings that finally drove many beleaguered property owners away from the region's exposed Chesapeake Bay coast.

"I’m not going to fight the ocean anymore," said ballroom owner Raymond B. Hunt, whose newly completed $20,000 bulkhead had simply crumpled under the waves during Flossy's short but memorable visit.

After salvaging what he could, the dejected Hunt told the Daily Press, he planned to "just walk away from the place."

Flossy's flood waters surged across most of the lowest-lying land in the area, including downtown Hampton, Buckroe, Fox Hill, Poquoson and Gloucester, tearing up docks, piers and wharves in many spots, including the main wharf at Old Point Comfort.

Hundreds of residents were evacuated by National Guard trucks after their homes and businesses were threatened by flooding that reached 6 to 8 feet above mean low water.

But the biggest loss to the local landscape was the missing lighthouse.

Battered by that spring's nor’easter as well as two hurricanes that struck Hampton Roads the previous year, the structure had been deactivated in 1936, according to the Coast Guard's light station history website.

The erosion-threatened keeper's house — which had been expanded to two floors in 1894 to accommodate the keeper's growing family — had finally been dismantled in 1914 at about the time the light itself was automated.

Long before that, the wind and waves had washed away much of the land surrounding the tower, forcing the government to fortify and refortify the 3-foot-thick base of the tower with extensive rip-rap campaigns in 1868, 1878 and 1888.

Still more measures were undertaken in 1881, when the government erected screens on what little land remained in a futile effort to keep the sand from blowing and washing away any further.

After the great August hurricane of 1933, however, all that was left was a small offshore deposit of piled-up but badly exposed rock — while the old footbridge that led to the tower had been reduced to a stub.

After Flossy struck, only the rip rap and a heap of brick rubble stood above the relentless waters.

"It was a landmark for generations — and it was all the more impressive because of its isolation and the surrounding view," Hampton History Museum Curator J. Michael Cobb says.

"So it had a special place in people's minds. It formed part of their folklore and their identity. And you can still see miniature lighthouses build of cobblestones in people's yards when you drive down Fox Hill Road toward Grandview today."

Erickson can be reached at 757-247-4783. Find more Hampton Roads history stories at dailypress.com/history and Facebook.com/hrhistory.

Online: Go to dailypress.com/history to see a gallery of archival photos documenting the lighthouse's history.

Sign up for email newsletters