The only lighthouse in West Virginia
We recently had the privilege of seeing the only lighthouse in the landlocked state of West Virginia. It was our 62nd lighthouse overall.
It’s made from a wind turbine tower that rolled down a hill during construction, rendering it unusable. The owners of a nearby campground and RV park got ahold of it and converted it into this “lighthouse.”
We didn’t know the Summersville Lake Lighthouse existed when we planned our road trip to New River Gorge National Park last December. But shortly before heading back to Michigan, we noticed it on the map, and luckily it wasn’t far out of the way. It would have sucked if we had gone all the way there and missed it. It still sucked, a little bit, because our hastily planned detour had us veering through the same rolling hills a few too many times.
It might not be quite a real lighthouse, but it is at least located on the largest lake in the state. Even so, the lake itself is man-made, only coming into existence in 1966 when the Summersville Dam was built.
The lighthouse does serve one practical purpose: it’s federally registered as a navigational aid for airplanes. According to Lighthouse Digest, at the top of the lighthouse there is a “Westinghouse L802 Rotational Beacon complete with a double bulls-eye Fresnel lens, circa 1941.” Its light can be seen from 30 miles away, according to the state tourism department. They found the beacon at a local airfield while “delving through a pile of old airplane parts” – a sensory turn of phrase. I can almost hear the delving.
Tours of the lighthouse are available by reservation only from November through March, so we were unable to climb the lighthouse when we visited on Dec. 6.
We also couldn’t see Summersville Lake from the lighthouse, and we didn’t stay long enough to find out where it was. It was a bitingly cold afternoon, and the vibe was off. We couldn’t quite tell if we were trespassing. A worker was ominously riding around on a utility vehicle, and we didn’t want to find out if he was coming our way. The timestamps on my photos suggest we were there for all of one minute.
But from what I can see online, we missed out on glimpsing a pretty cool lake. Apparently the water is so crystal clear that West Virginia sees fit to market it as “the Little Bahamas of the East.”
The pictures show a combination of rocky bluffs, lush green trees and pretty water that looks a lot like pictures I’ve taken around the Great Lakes.
Something to visit again on a warmer day.