Towers the Highway Heads guides stop for, on three coasts and the Great Lakes. Some you can climb, some are still working aids to navigation, and one was left unpainted so ships could tell it from its neighbour.
14 stops across 10 states, taken from the Highway Heads city guides.
Georgia
Tybee Island
Savannah’s beach, with a lighthouse that’s stood on the same spot since 1736; the current tower mixes an 1773 base with an 1867 top. Climbing to the top of the Tybee Island Light Station runs $14 for adults.
Maine
Bass Harbor Head Light
A lighthouse on a cliff at the southern tip of the island's quieter west side, one of three lighthouses within the park.
Maryland
Havre de Grace
A small town where the Susquehanna River meets the head of the Chesapeake Bay, with the Concord Point Lighthouse, built in 1827, and a half-mile waterfront promenade that Visit Maryland says leads to it. The lighthouse is open on weekends from April to October, weather permitting.
Minnesota
Split Rock Lighthouse
About an hour up the North Shore in Silver Bay: the 1910 lighthouse on a 133-foot cliff above Lake Superior, National Historic Landmark since 2011. Every November 10 the light is lit in memory of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank on that date in 1975.
Two Harbors
About 26 miles north-east of the Aerial Lift Bridge in a straight line: Two Harbors, where Grandma’s Marathon says its start line is just south of town. The Two Harbors lighthouse has guided ships into Agate Bay since 1892, and its operator, the Lake County Historical Society, says the light remains a private aid to navigation. The society lists the Light Station as open daily, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Mississippi
The Biloxi Lighthouse
Built in 1848, one of only two surviving lighthouses on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, which once had twelve.
New Jersey
Absecon Lighthouse
At 171 feet, the tallest lighthouse in New Jersey and the third-tallest masonry lighthouse in the country; first lit in 1857, deactivated as a working aid to navigation in 1933, though its light still shines every night.
Cape May Lighthouse grounds
Interpretive panels along the climb and at the base tell the story of the lighthouse keepers who once lived and worked here, alongside the mechanics of how the light still runs today.
North Carolina
Currituck Beach Lighthouse, Corolla
Left unpainted on purpose so ships could tell it apart from its black-and-white neighbors; visitors have been allowed to climb its 220 steps since 1991.
Bodie Island Lighthouse
Black-and-white striped and 156 feet tall, reopened to climbers only in 2013 after decades closed; it actually faces the sound side rather than the open Atlantic.
Pennsylvania
Erie Land Lighthouse
Built in 1867 after two earlier towers sank into unstable soil, this one was decommissioned in 1899 and its Fresnel lens shipped off to a lighthouse in Ohio — leaving a fully restored tower with no working light.
Presque Isle Light
An 1872 lighthouse inside the state park that, unlike its decommissioned cousin downtown, is still an active aid to navigation on Lake Erie.
South Carolina
Leamington Lighthouse (Hilton Head Rear Range Lighthouse)
Built in the 1870s on what is now the Palmetto Dunes Oceanfront Resort, older than the more-photographed Harbour Town Lighthouse.
Wisconsin
Kenosha North Pier Light and Simmons Island Beach
The 1906 red pier light at the end of the harbor breakwater is the landmark most visitors photograph first. Simmons Island beach next door is a wide public sand beach with the older 1866 light station on the point.
