Here is a great edifice for your Mystery Photo of today. Many may have seen it if they have traveled extensively. Can you recall what and where this is? Send your thoughts to ebrack2@gmail.com and be sure to tell us your hometown.
Allan Peel of San Antonio, Texas, wrote: “Today’s mystery photo is of the iconic red-and-white-striped Elbow Reef Lighthouse. Also known as the Hope Town Lighthouse, it is located in the small village of Hope Town, on Elbow Cay in the Abaco Islands of The Bahamas. Standing 89 feet tall, it was built by the British Imperial Lighthouse Service and first began operating in 1863.
“Perhaps the most remarkable and unique aspect of the lighthouse is the fact that, even today, the lighthouse keepers must hand-crank the weight mechanism every few hours to rotate the first-order Fresnel lens. There are only seven other manually operated lighthouses in the world, one each in Argentina, Scotland, Sri Lanka, Russia, South Africa and two in France.. However, the Elbow Reef Lighthouse is the only lighthouse still in service today that is both manually operated and kerosene-fueled.
“The Elbow Reef Lighthouse Society, whose members and volunteers must jump through hoops and cross many hurdles to secure the parts for the kerosene-burning apparatus of the light, most of which are no longer manufactured. It is somewhat ironic now, since when the lighthouse was first proposed in the 1860s, it was heavily protested by the local residents. This, despite the fact that about once a month, a ship would meet its demise on the shallow coral reef east of Hope Town.”
The photograph came from Eric Swinson of Fayetteville, via Susan McBrayer of Sugar Hill.
Others recognizing it were Jay Altman, Columbia, S.C.; George Graf, Palmyra, Va.; and Linda Lindeborg, Suwanee.
- SHARE A MYSTERY PHOTO: If you have a photo that you believe will stump readers, send it along (but make sure to tell us what it is because it may stump us too!) Click here to send an email and please mark it as a photo submission. Thanks.
