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The Liston Rear Range Lighthouse is Delaware's tallest and stands three miles inland from the riverside location of its companion front range light. Vessels bound upstream pick up the piercing lights of the Liston Range, the longest navigable range in the United States, near Ship John Shoal Lighthouse, which is located roughly seventeen miles from the front light. After following the Liston Range from Delaware Bay to the mouth of the Delaware River, vessels will alternately encounter red and green range lights as they continue up the river. The Liston Range, however, must exhibit white lights due to the length of the channel it covers. The Liston Rear Range Lighthouse is also the only range light on the Delaware River to retain its powerful Fresnel lens; all others have been removed in favor of modern optics that are easier to service and maintain.
The Liston Rear Range Lighthouse had elsewhere its beginnings. Built by the Kellogg Bridge Company of Buffalo, New York, the wrought iron tower originally served as the Port Penn Rear Range Lighthouse. The 120-foot tower was first lit on April 2, 1877 and helped guide ships from Ship John Shoal to Dan Baker Buoy until the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers realigned the shipping channel served by the Port Penn Range.
Click to view enlarged imageOn October 25, 1905, temporary lights were established on the Liston Range to serve the newly created channel, and the Port Penn Range was discontinued. The temporary Liston Rear Range Light consisted of a 100-foot-tall lamp post bearing a triangular lattice-work day mark and topped with a galvanized-iron headlight lantern. Daniel Bailey had been appointed keeper of the Port Penn Rear Range Lighthouse on July 1, 1904, and he continued to reside at that station while caring for the new temporary rear range light, located just a few miles away.
Since the expense of relocating the tower from the Port Penn Rear Range Station to the Liston Rear Range Station was estimated to be one-third the cost of a new tower, the Lighthouse Board contracted John L. Grim of Philadelphia to make the move. The Annual Report of the Light-House Board for 1906 contains the following entry for the Liston Rear Range Lighthouse: “The skeleton iron tower at the abandoned Port Penn rear light-station was moved here and re-erected by contract on a new foundation. On May 15, 1906, the light was removed from the temporary lantern post and placed in the lantern of the re-erected tower. A second order range lens with lamps was ordered.”
Manufactured by Barbier, Benard & Turenne of Paris, France, the second-order range lens ordered by the Lighthouse Board replaced the locomotive-type reflector light in the relocated tower on November 10, 1906. The walls of the lantern room had to be extended outward to provide room for the keeper to maneuver around the large Fresnel lens. By the end of August, 1907, a new dwelling, barn, oil house, and privy had been completed at the Liston Rear Range Station. No longer needed, the remaining structures at the Port Penn Rear Range Station were sold at auction for $760. The Port Penn keeper's dwelling is still standing and is currently used as a private residence.
Click to view enlarged imageAround 1913, a second dwelling was constructed near the Liston Rear Range Lighthouse for an assistant keeper. The station was electrified sometime in the 1930’s, allowing the station to be fully automated and the dwellings to be sold. Only the small parcel of land around the base of the tower is now owned by the Coast Guard.
In 2001, Harry Spencer, Jr. had the opportunity to revisit the station where he had been born in 1920 while his father, Harry Spencer, Sr., was serving as keeper. After the Coast Guard escort had opened the door to the tower, Harry confidently ascended the tower’s 152 steps without stopping to rest at any of the five landings. Harry remembers that his father “would always stand the first watch from sunset to midnight, before the assistant keeper relieved him to stand the second half of the watch from midnight to sunrise.” To provide warmth during the longer winter watches, the keepers would haul coal up the tower by the bucketful to burn in the watchroom’s small stove. During strong winds, the keepers could feel the tower swaying, and keeper Spencer once witnessed water slosh out of a bucket from the tower’s movement.
Harry Spencer, Jr. was serving as a volunteer facilitator in 2005 for educational programs sponsored by the Delaware River & Bay Lighthouse Foundation (DRBLHF). In this role, Harry visits classrooms, civic organizations, and senior centers to share his experience of growing up at a lighthouse and to educate the public about lighthouse preservation efforts in the State of Delaware. To help demonstrate how range lights operate, Harry spent roughly 100 hours constructing detailed models of the Liston Range Lights. The model of the Liston Rear Range Lighthouse stands over four feet tall and exhibits a fixed white light, while the Front Range Lighthouse model displays an occulting white light.
On May 3, 2004, the Delaware River & Bay Lighthouse Foundation signed a thirty-year lease on the Liston Rear Range Lighthouse with the Coast Guard and assumed responsibility for the maintenance and preservation of the historic tower and the nearby enameled brick oil house. Speaking at the signing, BMC Michael Baroco, officer-in-charge of USCG Aids to Navigation Team Philadelphia, remarked “this is not just a light or a structure made of wood and iron – it is a monument to the great men and women who kept these lights burning through many difficult times throughout our nation’s history.” In 2007, DRBLFH surrendered its lease on the lighthouse deciding to focus on its other two lighthouses in Sussex County.
Please note that this lighthouse is behind two houses on private property. I received permission from the house on the left to get close and take pictures.
Please log this from the road unless you receive permission to get closer.