After a flurry of last-minute bidding, a 150-year-old lighthouse marking the entrance to Baltimore from the Chesapeake was auctioned for $150,000 earlier this week.
The lighthouse is still an active aid to navigation, operated by the Coast Guard, but no one has lived there since 1964 when it was automated. The auction involved only the lighthouse, and not the water under it, and the interior needs some work. The auction notice says that there are no public utilities available.
The lighthouse is officially the Craighill Channel Lower Range Front Light Station, marking the mouth of the Patapsco River, about two miles offshore from North Point State Park. It is near where the Ever Forward container ship ran aground last year.
First lit in 1873, the lighthouse is part of a series of four range lighthouses designed to cut five miles off the southern approach to Baltimore. Their construction coincided with dredging of the channel to about 22 feet. The series involves two front and two rear ranges so captains can line them up to stay in the channel.
The Lower Range Front Light is 39 feet high with a white flashing light visible for 16 miles. It is a cassion-type, cylindrical lighthouse built on wooden pilings, with one-and-a-half stories for a keeper’s quarters inside and a cast-iron lantern room on top. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
This was the second time in six years that the light has been auctioned. It was sold by the U.S. government in 2017 in an auction that ended with a high bid of $96.000 from an undisclosed buyer. No work has been done on the lighthouse since then.
The current auction started on Nov. 30. The first bid was for just $20,000. Four days later, the highest bid was $35,000. But there was a lot of activity in the hours before the auction closed on Dec. 5, resulting in the $150,000 bid. We don’t know who the buyer is at this time.
(The pictures are from Alex Cooper Auctioneers.)
Read more at https://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=416
