Cape Hatteras Lighthouse Is Lifted From Foundation

BUXTON, N.C. —  Experts have lifted a historic 4,800-ton lighthouse from its foundation to move it back from its perch on an eroding beach along Cape Hatteras in North Carolina, project managers said.

Crews are preparing to ease the 198-foot brick tower onto temporary steel supports, they said in a status report issued Tuesday.

Teams working round the clock with diamond-edged saws have cut through and removed the lighthouse’s granite-block foundation, constructed steel supports under the tower and inserted hydraulic lifts to separate it gently from the granite slabs, which will become part of a new foundation.

“We’ve been pushing up from the very beginning, so we finally got some movement and we cracked the foundation,” said Skellie Hunt, project manager for contractor International Chimney Corp. “The whole lighthouse has been lifted up; the foundation has been separated from the lighthouse.”

Painted with a distinctive spiral black-and-white pattern, the Cape Hatteras lighthouse will be moved back about 1,600 feet from the ocean.

It has stood guard since 1870 over the so-called graveyard of the Atlantic, where thousands of ships have sunk while navigating shifting offshore currents and violent storms.

The nation’s tallest brick lighthouse, it was made largely obsolete by on-board satellite navigation systems and another lighthouse built on a steel rig about 14 miles offshore.

But it attracts an estimated 1 million visitors a year, and thousands are expected to flock here in the coming months to watch the move.

Crews plan to begin moving the lighthouse on a system of steel rails in mid-June, about the time when they initially expected to complete the move. Because of delays, the lighthouse will be on the rails early in the summer hurricane season.

The biggest threat will come early in the move, as crews begin sliding the tower southwest toward the new site. For the first 850 feet of the move, only a narrow beach and low sand dunes stand between the lighthouse and the sea.

Local officials opposed to the move say waves kicked up by a hurricane could breach the dunes and erode sand under the rails, toppling the lighthouse.

The delays were caused in part by the discovery that granite foundation stones lay under the entire tower. Crews initially thought the stones only ringed the perimeter.

Last weekend, workers poured a new 12-foot-deep concrete foundation for the lighthouse.