Ocracoke Lighthouse

The seas around the Outer Banks have earned their nickname — the Graveyard of the Atlantic — and Ocracoke Inlet was among the most treacherous passages on the East Coast. The lighthouse built here in 1823 by Noah Porter still stands and still works: 75 feet of all-brick tower, automated since 1955, its beam visible 14 miles offshore. Confederate troops dismantled the fourth-order Fresnel Lens in 1864; Union forces restored it. The tower is not open for climbing, but the grounds are open, and the lighthouse itself is reason enough.