Little Hope Island Lighthouse

Little Hope Island Lighthouse once stood near the centre of Little Hope Island, off Port Mouton on the South Shore, an exposed offshore station in the Atlantic Ocean along the Lighthouse Route. A wooden beacon had been established on the island by 1834, and a proper square wooden tower followed in 1865 carrying a revolving red light.

In 1908 that first tower was replaced by a far more substantial 77-foot circular concrete tower with buttresses, painted white, whose beam reached 99 feet above the water. Equipped with a 2nd order dioptric lens showing a group flashing white light and backed by an acetylene fog signal from 1937, the big concrete tower was automated by 1948 and eventually decommissioned after its lantern was removed in 1991.

The tower's end was dramatic: it was badly damaged by Hurricane Juan on 29 September 2003 and then crashed into the ocean during a vicious winter storm on 7 December 2003, with no plans to replace it. Nothing remains standing today, and Little Hope Island is now marked only by its history, best appreciated from boat passages off Port Mouton.