For many years the watermen of the Chesapeake "steered by the stars," by trees, and by a lighted window here and there.
One of the earlier government lighthouses on Chesapeake Bay was the Smith Point Light located at the mouth of the Potomac on Smith Point, Northumberland County.
There seem to be no available records concerning the erection of this lighthouse. In an 1804 issue of Blunt's American Coast Pilot reference is made to a lighthouse having been "erected lately on Smith Point." This establishes the date of its erection as prior to 1804.
In the 1833 issue of the same book there is a small drawing of the lighthouse at Smith Point which shows a tower with a house close by. These structures appeared to be situated on the tip end of a point with a gently sloping hill, or bank, in the rear. The picture shows a lighthouse with the same general appearance as the first government lighthouse at Cape Henry at the entrance to the Chesapeake, built in 1791. The Smith Point tower, however, was round instead of octagonal.
According to older natives of the region who remembered the original lighthouse at Smith Point, it was a round tower built of sandstone blocks, approximately sixty or seventy feet high. A spiral inside stairway with stone steps led up to the lantern at the top.
The sandstone blocks for the tower at Cape Henry had been brought from abroad as ballast in ships. The same thing may have been true of the sandstone blocks of which Smith Point lighthouse was built.
The light at Cape Henry first consisted of oil lamps burning, in turn, whale oil, colza (cabbage) oil, lard oil, and finally kerosene after the discovery of petroleum in Pennsylvania in 1859. The same type of lamps and fuel were doubtless used at Smith Point.
The keeper's house at Smith Point, according to tradition, was located thirty or forty yards back of the tower. It was a brick story-and-a-half house with outside chimneys on each end and an ell in the back. There were fireplaces in every room and a dark underground room which was referred to in later years as the "dungeon."
When this early lighthouse was built there were still a few pirates lurking about the Bay.