Build Your Own Lighthouse

Cape Cod National Seashore is home to several lighthouses. Lighthouses were used to aid maritime coastal navigation, warn mariners of hazards, establish their position, and guide them to their destinations. These iconic structures can be seen throughout Cape Cod National Seashore. If you are unable to visit, you can make your own at home!

 

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Transcript

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Hey guys it's ranger Olivia here at Cape Cod National Seashore,

behind me I've got the Nauset lighthouse on this beautiful blue sunny morning. Visitors have been

coming here since Cape Cod National Seashore was established to look at these beautiful

iconic structures, but for more than 300 years mariners out in the water have been

using these lighthouses for many many different things to keep them safe out in the water.

Lighthouses have many functions, they allow mariners to safely navigate, help them see

dangerous shoals or rocky outcroppings, and then also see safe areas where there are harbors.

In recent years the lights in the lighthouses are based on electricity and they spin in a

unique pattern that helps mariners identify one lighthouse to another.

For example Nauset lighthouse behind me has an alternating white and red light that spins every

10 seconds, so ships out on the shore and they see that rotating light they know they're here

in Eastham in Massachusetts. Oftentimes ships out in the water can see multiple lighthouses at once

and based on their direction and angle they're able to then figure out exactly where they are.

Before the use of electrical bulbs in the lighthouses they utilized candles and

later oil lamps with refracted mirror lenses called Fresnel lenses, like you can see here,

to amplify that light out into the coast for many miles.

Before the technology of rotating and blinking lights existed

they had to build multiple lighthouses in one area to allow mariners to determine where they were,

so for example right here on this spot a couple hundred years ago were the three sisters

lighthouses these were three identical structures spaced out evenly and so that way if a ship was

coming up they could see the three lights in a row and identify that they were here in Eastham.

Currently for mariners Nauset lighthouse is still an active light that shines out

to the Atlantic ocean to allow them to navigate safely. For visitors it's

become an iconic symbol of Cape Cod National Seashore, my name is ranger Olivia and thank

you so much for joining me let's head inside and make our own lighthouses.

You can see some of the lighthouses I have made with this craft before,

this green one has a fun swirl stripe on it and this blue has a colorful middle stripe

we'll be designing our own lighthouses today. To start we'll need some scissors, some tape,

whatever color variety you have is fine, a marker, a plastic 16 ounce cup,

and then a clear or opaque five ounce cup. Let's get started. So you can either create your own

design with your own colors and patterns or you can model them after a lighthouses that exist

already so I'll be starting with this orange cup and I'll be using some white tape this

is electrical tape an electrical tape is really great to use for this craft because it's stretchy

they can go around the curvature of the cup really well. So I'm going to be doing just a simple white

stripe along the middle of my lighthouse, to kind of give you give you guys an idea of what yours

look could look like. I'm roughly basing this on the Sankaty Head lighthouse in on Nantucket

um almost like an opposite design I'm going for they have a big red stripe in the middle there.

This lighthouse is really cool and stands out up on the bluffs of Nantucket. As you can see behind

there I'm using a marker to create a doorway and eventually some windows. Another fun design of a

lighthouse is the Cape Lookout lighthouse in the Outer Banks of North Carolina has a diamond-like

pattern which is really fun. So as I'm creating the doorway and then maybe some windows

you can also see the design of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse that's about 210 feet tall,

tallest in America that has a fun spiral shape so there's lighthouses of all shapes and colors so if

you have a cool color cup or if it's just white that works too some light houses are very plain

some are really colorful so it's up to you how you want to design it and then we're going to take

that clear smaller cup and then we're going to cut just a sliver sliver off the bottom. That way

it fits on the top of our colored cup a little bit better so this will be the top lantern room of the

lighthouse and so we're just going to trim it just a little bit so we can fit a little bit better.

Get an adult if you need help with the scissors and be very careful watch your fingers there as

you're cutting. So now it's going to fit a little better on the top there you can also use a other

colored sharpies or markers to create colored lenses on the lighthouse to kind of give it

an even more unique color and then we'll use a tea light as the light for the lighthouse.

You guys are all set so you can make multiple of these use them as night night lights,

they're really fun and I'm glad you guys were able to be creative with me thanks again for joining.

Duration:

5 minutes, 21 seconds

Join ranger Olivia to learn about lighthouses at Cape Cod National Seashore, and build your own at home!

 

Materials needed:
Scissors
Tape
Marker
Plastic cup (16 oz any color)
Clear or opaque 5 oz cup


For information about lighthouses at Cape Cod National Seashore
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