Photograph of Mispillion Light — Photograph by Skip willits, Public domain. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Mispillion Lighthouse and Beacon Tower

Built in 1873. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987.

From the record

“Mispillion Lighthouse is a lighthouse in Delaware, United States, located on the Mispillion River near Delaware Bay.”
Wikipedia article Mispillion Light, CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 136 National Register listings published here for Sussex County · listed in 1987 · category: Building · built in 1873.

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 1 building, 1 structure as contributing to the listing.
Address. NE end of CR 203, Milford, 19963
When was it listed? February 1987
Category. building
Census division. Milford South
When was it built? 1873
National Register reference number. 86002919 - 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.

Fires near this property

3 since 2002

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 3 fires within 5 miles of Mispillion Lighthouse and Beacon Tower between 2002 and 2015, burning about 1,254 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1
Debris and open burning	1
Smoking	1

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
18 April 2015	Smoking	3.0 acres	Delaware Forest Service	SCOTTS FIRE
12 April 2015	Debris and open burning	under an acre	Delaware Forest Service	TOBERT FIRE
10 March 2002	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1,250 acres	Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge	SLAUGHTERBEACH

Every fire recorded in Sussex 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
Egglinton Hall	6.2 miles	1983
Milford Shipyard Area Historic District	6.3 miles	1983
Carlisle House	6.4 miles	1982
Dr. Dawson House	6.4 miles	1983
South Milford Historic District	6.6 miles	1983
Milford Railroad Station	6.8 miles	1983

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 86002919 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Sussex County	All 136 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.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.