Fire Island Lighthouse is a visible landmark on the Great South Bay, in southern Suffolk County, New York on the western end of Fire Island, a barrier island off the southern coast of Long Island. The lighthouse is located within Fire Island National Seashore and just to the east of Robert Moses State Park. It is part of the Fire Island Light Station which contains the light, keeper’s quarters, and the lens building containing the original first-order Fresnel lens, and a boat house.
The current lighthouse is a 180-foot stone tower that began operation in 1858 to replace the 74-foot tower originally built in 1826. The United States Coast Guard decommissioned the light in 1974. In 1982 the Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society was formed to preserve the lighthouse. FILPS raised over $1.2 million to restore the tower and light. On May 25, 1986 the United States Coast Guard returned the Fire Island Lighthouse to an active aid to navigation. On February 22, 2006, the light became a private aid to navigation. It continues to be on the nautical charts, but is operated and maintained by the Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society and not the USCG. It was added to the National
Register of Historic Places in 1981 and a boundary increase for the national historic district occurred in 2010.
When the lighthouse was built it was on the edge of Fire Island Inlet and marked the western end of Fire Island. However Fire Island has extended itself through accumulating sand so that the lighthouse is now nearly five miles (8.0 km) from the western end of the island at Democrat Point. The Archives Center at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History has a collection of souvenir postcards of lighthouses and has digitized 272 of these and made them available online. These include postcards of Fire Island Light with links to customized nautical charts provided by National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.
The lighthouse celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2008, the same year as the 100th anniversary of Robert Moses State Park. From 1970 to 1975, the lighthouse and its surrounding area were seen in the opening and closing credits sequences of the CBS television soap opera The Guiding Light. Men in Black II also included some filming on the island in the immediate vicinity of the lighthouse. 2008 movie “What Happens in Vegas” with Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher featured the Lighthouse as the Cameron’s favorite place.
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