Lighthouses, Beacons, Buoys and Public Piers

Our Founding Fathers knew that the nation they created, the United States, was at its core a maritime nation. Yes, its economy was agriculturally based, but we had and still do have a plethora of natural resources. More importantly, since the founding of each of the Thirteen Colonies, they have all had customers overseas.

Since many of them were traders who dealt in what we now call international commerce, functioning harbors were a vital necessity. Back then, there were no airplanes, and like today, most products traveled by ship. Merchant ships running aground were bad for business. Accurate charts had to be created and channels marked for captains to see. Mariners needed to be warned of dangerous waters, and our Founding Fathers didn’t want anyone or any business to have a monopoly on piers and docks.

Early in the First U.S. Congress, Senators and Representatives gave the power to assume the support – funding, maintenance, design, and installation – of beacons, buoys, lighthouses, and public piers. The act was signed into law by President George Washington in July 1790.

This piece of legislation had far-reaching implications.

Congress created the Lighthouse Establishment to manage these navigational aids and put it under the Department of the Treasury. This arrangement lasted until 1851, when problems – corruption and inefficiency – caused Congress to create the Lighthouse Board. The new organization gave responsibility for the construction and maintenance of the lighthouses to the U.S. Corps of Engineers. The legislation also gave the responsibility for creating and managing navigational aids on inland waterways to the Corps of Engineers while the Coast Guard (back then known as the Revenue Cutter Service) maintains those on the coasts.

This arrangement lasted until 1910, when the Lighthouse Board was dissolved and the Lighthouse Service created. Finally, in 1939, the Coast Guard was given the responsibility for design, construction, installation, and maintenance of all maritime navigational aids, making the Lighthouse Service part of the Coast Guard.

However, since the 1930s, we’ve added navigational aids for aircraft, which are the responsibility of the FAA. Initially, the Department of Defense was responsible for the constellation of GPS satellites, which is now managed by the Space Force.

In 1807, Congress created the Survey of the Coasts, which became the U.S. Coast Survey in 1836, until some bright bulb in Congress decided to rename it the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Service in 1876, the name it holds today. These are the folks charged with charting and mapping the coasts, rivers, and lakes of the United States and its territories for which buoys lighthouses were needed.

Then in 1970, the government merged the Coast and Geodetic Agency with several other agencies to create what we now know as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency a.k.a. NOAA.

All of these navigational agencies and systems weren’t even in the imaginations of scientists and engineers back in 1790 when the Lighthouse Establishment was created. Yet, our Founding Fathers realized the importance of them not only for national security but also as an aid to efficient commerce.

Image is the pennant flown on ships of the U.S. Lighthouse Service.