Twin Lights

Joshua Doty of Somereville, N.J. was appointed by President Adams as the first keeper of Navesink on April 28, 1828. Since then, seventeen principal keepers and more than sixty assistant keepers worked the Navesink Light Station. Navesink, with two lighthouse towers, was a large station tomaintain. In the early 20th century when the keepers had only one tower to maintain, they were also assigned the responsibility for buoys on the Shrewsbury and Navesink Rivers from Sandy Hook to Red Bank.

The Navesink Light station was declared surplus property in 1953. Several people had ideas about the future of the retired light station. One person wanted to make the light station a religious shrine with large statuary gazing out from the lighthouse grounds towards the ocean. Another idea was to convert the center of the building into a restaurant and use the towers as a tourist attraction, presumably to entertain people while they waited for seating.

At 260 feet above sea level, the Highlands of Navesink is one of the highest points of land on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. Overlooking the narrow peninsula of Sandy Hook and being only twenty-six miles from New York City, it was inevitable that the Highlands would become important to the commerce, navigation and defense of that city.