Photograph of Liston Range Rear Light — Photograph by Unknown, Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Liston Ranger Rear Light Station

Built in 1877. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

From the record

“Liston Range Rear Lighthouse is a lighthouse in Delaware, United States, on the Delaware River. The 120 feet (37 m) wrought iron tower was made by the Kellogg Bridge Company of Buffalo, New York.”
Wikipedia article Liston Range Rear Light, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 411 National Register listings published here for New Castle County · listed in 1978 · category: District · built in 1877.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 3 buildingss, 2 structuress as contributing to the listing.
Address. W of Port Penn on DE 2, Port Penn, 19709
When was it listed? November 1978
Category. district
Census division. Middletown-Odessa
When was it built? 1877
National Register reference number. 78000905 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Mines and quarries near this property

1 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 1 working within 5 miles of Liston Ranger Rear Light Station: 1 plant. All of them still produce. What was taken out: Sulfur. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Where	Site	Commodity	Status	Recorded
	Delaware Plant Getty	Sulfur	Plant

Every working recorded in New Castle County

Storms near this property

8 since 2003

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The National Weather Service names Port Penn, the town this property stands in, in 8 storm reports between 2003 and 2024: 5 thunderstorm wind, 1 lightning, 1 flash flood, 1 funnel cloud. No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date opens the federal record of that event.

When	Event	Place named	Harm	What the report says
July 2003	Lightning	Port Penn	$100,000	no account filed
July 2024	Thunderstorm Wind	Port Penn	-	Reports of tree damage with debris blocking portions of Dutch Neck Road and Thorntown Road northwest of Port Penn. Power outages also reported in the area. Time estimated.
June 2021	Funnel Cloud	Port Penn	-	A funnel cloud was observed near Port Penn. Photos showed it extended about halfway to the ground. This was likely a non-mesocyclonic funnel associated with interactions between new updrafts and old outflow boundaries. Time estimated from radar and public reports.
April 2019	Thunderstorm Wind	Port Penn	-	A downed tree and utility pole led to the closure of the intersection of West Market Street and Delaware City Port Penn Road. The time of the event was estimated from radar.
June 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Port Penn	-	Trees and wires down.
June 2016	Thunderstorm Wind	Port Penn	-	Several trees downed due to thunderstorm winds.
June 2013	Flash Flood	Port Penn	-	Thunderstorms with heavy rain caused flash flooding in Port Penn. Delaware State Route 9 was closed and several cars had to be abandoned. No serious injuries were reported.
August 2004	Thunderstorm Wind	Port Penn	-	no account filed

Every storm recorded in New Castle County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Mondamon Farm	under 500 feet	1985
Biddle House	0.4 miles	1978
Retirement Farm	0.7 miles	1985
Old Ford Dairy (Boundary Increase)	1.3 miles	1986
Old Ford Dairy	1.3 miles	1985
Idalia Manor	1.3 miles	1985

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 78000905 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
New Castle County	All 411 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.