I think we have a tendency to judge the lighthouse popularity buy how much its L.E. goes for on the secondary market. Which lighthouses are really the most popular?
Maybe we could all come up with different lighthouses and how many people visit it a year. This info could be used by HL to judge which lighthouses should sell the best for the new ornaments.

As we enter lighthouses I will put them in order by most visited and then I will try and rank them in secondary market value, if possible.

I will start.

Statue of Liberty--4,000,000 visitors a year

Cape hatteras ------224,000 visitors a year

Fire Island --------116,000 visitors a year

St Augustine -------110,000 people a year

Ponce De Leon ------100,000 people a year

Crisp Point MI ------22,000 visitors a year

Found some numbers on Hatteras for 1997.
224,000 visitors entering the tower!

Dave

Wow! That's a lot of people climbing up and down those stairs. Do they charge for the climb?

Bob

No Bob,

Only for the oxygen they have to use on you and the stretcher they need to carry you back down.

bobo

Bodie Island Lighthouse, 100,000+ a year

Yes there is a charge to climb Hatteras...and the Paramedics stand by.

Judy

I was coming down the stairs from the lantern room at Montauk Light a couple of summers ago when I encountered a lady who made it up to the halfway mark but ran out of breath. She spoke with somewhat of what would be described as a New York accent and stated, "What no elevator?" "They should put elevators in these places!" I just kind of grinned and went about my business.

Perhaps that lady, and many other people who attempt to climb these tall structures, should reconsider if they know they are physically unable to climb that many stairs.

Bob

You know, visiting a lighthouse because it's climable doesn't seem to be a factor in popularity. Look at Bodie Island in NC and Point Judith in RI as two very good examples. People come no matter.

Daniel asks us, "Which lighthouses should sell the best for future ornaments?"

I won't know if I like this new design until I see it in person, so which lighthouse depicted doesn't matter yet for me. I considered all the previous ornaments as a Christmas "set", and the new design on paper doesn't fit into the set...but that's the subject of another thread.

If I were choosing lighthouses for future ornaments, I'd go for the picturesque. Using Bodie Island again as an example, instead of only depicting the tower as in the original ornament, I'd go for more the look depicted in HL719, the Bodie Christmas edition.

Looks prettier on the tree.

Judy

I agree with Judy about the Christmas ornaments.
I like the old ones better. Only I would have liked them just a tiny bit larger.

I agree with Judy to some extent.

A more 'accurate' picture of which are the 'popular' lighthouses would be a poll on which lighthouses people have visited/viewed.

This favors the more accessible lighthouses, but that's why they are more likely to be visited because of their access. Punta Gorda wouldn't score well, Alcatraz might because you can see it from almost anywhere around the SF Bay.

But even this kind of poll has flaws. Just because you've seen Alcratraz from, say Fort Point, doesn't mean you'd purchase it as an ornament.

But if you have NOT visited Punta Gorda or Burrows Island or Whaleback it's is probably a pretty good indicator you wouldn't buy it.

Then there is that "gotta have them all" syndrome that kicks in when you've bought those you've seen or visited first and started buying the ones you'll visit "someday"... and we all know how that ball rolls down the hill.

There is of course a lighthouse with an elevator. But the public is not allowed inside AFAIK

Looking down your nose at those less fit and less able than yourself is not a loveable attribute IMHO. Even with smiley faces

Incidentally, are the smiley faces counted as photos - because I kept getting that I had too many photos and I only had 6?

We pick which lighthouse we climb very carefully - both how we are feeling ATM, and how stressful it is likely to be and most of all - what are we likely to see when we get up there.

I have been to quite a few lighthouses, but I can only remember climbing two of them - Key West and Cape Florida.

Bob didn't do Cape Florida because he had a bad knee at the time.

Incidentally I've only recently gotten a program that allows me to straighten out pictures. I hadn't done that last one with parasailers.

Anyway, I did not have any trouble climbing Cape Florida, but I did not even consider climbing Currituck, St. Augustine, Hatteras or even Hunting Island.

When I was younger I climbed everyting - to the top of Notre Dome and the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the fire tower at Valley Forge, the tower at Washington's Crossing, to the top of the dome in Sintra where it was so windy that my pocketbook flap flew open and the wind lifted my pocketbook away from my body when I went up the steps on the outside of the dome.



But after I climbed the tower at Valley Forge in 1969, I started to have a lot of trouble with my knees and I was only a little over 30 years old at the time. My knees got so painful that I couldn't even look under the bed for my shoes.

Bob sometimes climbs things for me and takes pictures from the top. Or he used to.

Anyway, when I climbed Key West I almost didn't make it. But I was determined. I had to sit down at the top for about 5 minutes to get my breath back, and one of the other people up there asked me if I was OK, and mentioned that he was a cardiologist when he asked. So I must have looked bad.

I don't know what made the difference between Cape Florida and Key West. There was only about a year in time


The reason I wanted to climb this particular lighthouse was to replicate this photo of the West Martello Tower. But I couldn't see it.

This was as close as I could come.


There were interesting views of the town - the lighthouse isn't right on the water.



This is Hemingway's house - Hemingway used to complain that the lighthouse keeper could look into his bedroom.



Incidentally I prefer the look of the Key West lighthouse before they painted it white.


It doesn't look "real" to me as a white lighthouse.

Yes, those smiley faces count as an image... Not sure about your picture in the 'signature' area.



What program did you get that 'straightened' pictures? I use PhotoShop, but it's a 'guess' as to how much to rotate it.

Way back when, there was a photo program for Macintosh that allowed you to drag a line along what was supposed to be 'horizontal' and it would rotate that picture to horizontal based on your drawn line.

picata will let you straighten photos.

Not sure what you mean about my sig photo - it is a collage with me and my husband with our 11 grandchildren, and it doesn't seem to count in the total.

This is the original


This is the straightened version. I also lightened it a little so that the colors were more realistic.



You can see that you lose a little of the stuff on the margins.

The program puts a grid on the photo and you can use it against the horizon (or against a vertical post) to see when it is straight.

Well there is one lighthouse with an elevator that I know of, but when I climbed Sulivan's Island it was broken, and the Coastie said it was only for "freight". Of course I believe he stated he had been "freight" on a couple of occasions.

I'm not looking down my nose at anyone less fit, Rosalee. I found the situation humorous because of the way the lady said it and any reasonable and prudent knows that the only way to the Montauk Lantern Room is via the stairs. It reminded me of something you may have expected from the Seinfeld Show.

Bob

OK - it just sort of rubbed me the wrong way that you said because it might have been me (although I wouldn't make the comment about the elevator).

Fire Island Lighthouse 116,000 visitors a year

Well here is one to compare others against. Crisp Point MI, gets about 22,000 visitors a year (according to their newsletter).

Statue of Liberty. Guessing over one million a year.

No longer an official lighthouse but neither is Ponce Inlet and other "lighthouses".

Eric
I checked several web sites and I came up with 4 million people a year vist Statue of Liberty

I knew it was a lot Daniel. The tickets to go in the pedestal would be around the number I had, so add in the ones that don't go in, plus the boats and helicopters.

My all time favorite lighthouse is Thomas Point Shoal.
Only recently open for tours, by boat from the Annapolis Maritime Museum. Can't count visitors who come to see it since it is in the Chesapeake Bay. Maybe if there was a ticker for each time a boat passed or someone took a picture!

Well Susan and I saw Thomas Shoal from a boat, so there is 2! And that was before it was open for tours.