Hooper Strait Lighthouse, Maryland
- Finished block size 12" W x 12" H
- Cotton fabrics, ribbon, thread sketching and inked details, cotton batting
- Machine pieced, appliquéd, and quilted
History of Hooper Strait Lighthouse
This area of shoals at the entrance to Tangier Sound was first marked by a series of light vessels. After the last vessel was destroyed during the Civil War, a screwpile lighthouse was erected in 1867. Only ten years later it was swept off its piles by heavy ice, the keepers barely escaping, and carried five miles down the Chesapeake Bay.
A larger, hexagonal screwpile was built in 1879. It was automated in 1954. The Coast Guard planned to demolish it in 1966, but the lighthouse was acquired by the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels. It is one of four screwpiles remaining around the Bay, which once had more than forty of that design.