Permanent Coast Guard Beacon Tower Installed Next Week

OCEAN CITY -- The familiar beacon at the end of the north jetty at the Ocean City Inlet will be replaced with a more permanent structure starting next week.

The original beacon tower, roughly 20 feet tall, which for years alerted boat traffic to the presence of the rock jetty and the entrance to the Inlet, along with its somber alarm that could be heard from miles around on the clearest of nights, was swept away by Hurricane Irene in August 2011 and was never seen again. When the height of the storm subsided, all that was left of the beacon was a rusty stub bolted to the giant rocks at the end of the jetty.

The Coast Guard beacon was one of over 500 aids to navigation destroyed during Hurricane Irene in the mid-Atlantic area alone and certainly the most conspicuous. In the wake of the storm, the Coast Guard discovered the tower had been swept away and a search for the 20-foot, 3,500 pound beacon was undertaken in the waters in and around the Inlet to no avail. In late 2011, sonar pings picked up by a search vessel appeared to indicate the massive structure was still on the sea floor just north and east of the Inlet jetty and a recovery operation was undertaken, but the apparent beacon on the bottom turned out to be a false alarm and the original tower was never found.
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