East Point Lighthouse stands as Cumberland County’s oldest active beacon

East Point Lighthouse in Heislerville is more than a postcard view on the Southern Bayshore. Built in 1849, it still serves as an active navigational aid at the mouth of the Maurice River on Delaware Bay, a rare combination of age, function, and setting that makes it one of Cumberland County’s most important working landmarks. It is also the only operational lighthouse on the bay, a fact that makes the site feel less like a relic and more like a piece of maritime infrastructure that still matters to boaters, fishermen, and the shoreline communities that grew up around the water.

A working landmark, not just a scenic stop

What sets East Point apart visually is its Cape Cod-style profile, a two-story whitewashed brick structure with a bright red roof and a black lantern room. VisitNJ describes it as a place that has guided commercial fishermen and pleasure boaters since 1849, which captures the lighthouse’s continuing role in daily life along the bay rather than a purely decorative one. That practical role is why East Point still anchors local identity in Maurice River Township and why it remains tied to Cumberland County’s bayshore economy.

The building is also architecturally unusual. The New Jersey Historic Trust calls East Point a relatively rare example of a lighthouse with an integrated keeper’s dwelling and tower, a design that gives the property added preservation value because the residence and beacon were conceived as one functioning unit. The trust also identifies it as the oldest lighthouse in the Delaware River and Bay area, which helps explain why preservation advocates treat the site as both a landmark and a fragile artifact of coastal engineering.

Why the setting matters now

East Point sits in the Heislerville Wildlife Management Area in Maurice River Township, at the edge of the Maurice Wild and Scenic River system and along a broader bayfront landscape shaped by marsh, tides, and bird migration. The National Park Service says 35.4 miles of the Maurice River were designated Wild and Scenic on December 1, 1993, linking the lighthouse to a protected corridor that matters for fish, wildlife, water quality, and the Atlantic Flyway. That context turns the lighthouse into a gateway for understanding how coastal ecology, public access, and heritage tourism overlap in one stretch of Cumberland County.

The lighthouse also fits into the Bayshore Heritage Scenic Byway, which places East Point alongside other South Jersey stops where residents can build a day trip around shoreline history, wildlife viewing, and small-town exploration. VisitNJ currently lists the site as temporarily closed, but its location still makes it part of the county’s public story, especially for people tracing the route from Heislerville to the Maurice River back bays and the Delaware Bay shoreline. Even when the doors are shut, the place still reads as a marker on the landscape and a reminder of how much of Cumberland County’s identity is built around access to water.

How East Point survived near-loss

The lighthouse’s survival story is as dramatic as its setting. The U.S. Coast Guard says the light was automated in 1911, renamed from the Maurice River Lighthouse to East Point Lighthouse in 1913, and decommissioned in 1941. A fire in July 1971 nearly destroyed the building, but the Coast Guard relit East Point on July 2, 1980, restoring it to the list of active aids to navigation after local restoration work pushed the project forward.

That rescue is closely tied to the Maurice River Historical Society, which formed in 1971 in response to the threat to the lighthouse and became the force behind fundraising and hands-on recovery. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 25, 1995, and later became part of the Maurice River Lighthouse and East Point Archeological District in 2015, a reminder that East Point’s value extends beyond the tower itself to the surrounding historic landscape. The preservation work turned a burned, abandoned structure into a place that could again tell Cumberland County’s maritime story in the open.

The preservation fight is the point

East Point has not been saved once and for all. The New Jersey Historic Trust records capital preservation grants of $189,934 in 1996 and $300,000 in 2000 for the lighthouse, and says later grant support helped with interior restoration after earlier work stabilized exterior masonry. That investment matters because it shows how public preservation dollars can keep a working historic site usable while the state balances education, heritage tourism, and structural repair.

The policy question now is who stewards the site next. In 2023, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection issued a lease opportunity and request for proposals to restore, develop, operate, and interpret East Point as a historic site, with the lease framework calling for educational, cultural, recreational, and interpretive programming. At the same time, preservation groups have warned that erosion is eating away at the shoreline around the lighthouse, making coastal change the most immediate threat to a structure that has already survived automation, decommissioning, fire, and decades of neglect.

That tension is what makes East Point feel alive rather than nostalgic. It remains a functioning aid to navigation, a landmark on the Bayshore, and a test case for how Cumberland County protects places that still serve the public while standing on ground that keeps moving under them.