Shinnecock Light was a

lighthouse A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of physical structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lens (optics), lenses and to serve as a beacon for navigational aid for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways. Ligh ...

on the south side of

Long Island Long Island is a densely populated continental island in southeastern New York (state), New York state, extending into the Atlantic Ocean. It constitutes a significant share of the New York metropolitan area in both population and land are ...

, New York. The name comes from the

Shinnecock Indian Nation The Shinnecock Indian Nation is a federally recognized tribe of historically Algonquian peoples, Algonquian-speaking Native Americans in the United States, Native Americans based at the eastern end of Long Island, New York. This tribe is headq ...

. The original red brick tower was built in 1858. It was tall and had a 1st order

Fresnel lens A Fresnel lens ( ; ; or ) is a type of composite compact lens (optics), lens which reduces the amount of material required compared to a conventional lens by dividing the lens into a set of concentric annular sections. The simpler Dioptrics, d ...

, itself almost tall. If it were still standing it would be one of the ten tallest lighthouses in the US. It was discontinued in 1931 in favor of a skeleton tower and demolished by the Coast Guard in 1948. Some time later the

Coast Guard A coast guard or coastguard is a Maritime Security Regimes, maritime security organization of a particular country. The term embraces wide range of responsibilities in different countries, from being a heavily armed military force with cust ...

built a communication tower on the site and moved the light to the height of on that tower.

References

Lighthouses completed in 1858 Lighthouses in Suffolk County, New York {{US-lighthouse-stub