Cove Point Lighthouse, a shining beacon for Chesapeake Bay mariners navigating near Calvert Cliffs, has gone out.   According to Bonnie Farmer, Communications and Marketing Coordinator of the Calvert Marine Museum, the light was switched off on August 7, 2026, to begin repairs on the 200-year-old lighthouse.

Major restoration of the lighthouse tower is being performed by ICC Commonwealth Historic Preservation in preparation for the lighthouse’s 200th anniversary celebration in 2028.  Work on the tower is anticipated to continue through October 2026.

“This important work will help preserve the historic structure for future generations while ensuring it remains a treasured landmark for years to come,” Farmer says, but she adds that the date to reenergize the lantern is tentative.

Shane Tyrrell, BM1, Officer in Charge of the US Coast Guard in the Potomac region, says that the Coast Guard will soon issue a broadcast notice to mariners to inform them that the navigation aid is temporarily discontinued.

Cove Point Lighthouse going dark brings a sense of loss to those who cherish the familiar rotating beacon, but it will have a minimal impact on navigation today, because so much has changed in the two centuries since this lighthouse was built.   Two hundred years ago, the shores of the bay were pitch black.  Wooden sailing ships worked their way slowly through the treacherous bay, using navigational charts that were crude sketches, and taking soundings to avoid grounding.  Lighthouses were the welcome navigational beacons flashing warnings of dangerous waters and marking safe navigation routes.

Today, satellite guided navigation pinpoints a vessel’s location and tracks its progress continuously on intricately detailed navigation charts, while high-resolution sonar maps the depths slipping beneath the hull.  The Cove Point Lighthouse today is a welcome, cheerful fixture in the region, an historic landmark, but its once guiding beam of light in the dark is now overwhelmed by blazing industrial lights of the Cove Point Liquid Natural Gas Terminal bordering the light house property.  In contrast to such modern intrusions into nature, no one ever regards a lighthouse as an eyesore.

Seafarers and landlubbers alike look forward to the day when the Cove Point Lighthouse shines again in celebration of its bicentennial anniversary.

First published in The Cambridge Spy