This is one of the caches available on the Wayne County Bicentennial trail! The purpose of this project is to highlight local Wayne County History and share geocaching with folks that may know nothing about it! Your job is to go find this cache and open it and record your name on the log paper inside. You can also trade items that are in the geocache with items of your own if you want. Then put it back in place for the next visitor! Permission has been given to place a cache here. You are looking for a plastic food storage container.
If you're participating in the Bicentennial Passport program, please punch the correct area on the passport for this geocache and leave the punch in the cache container. You can get a paper passport at the public libraries in Wayne County or download it at www.waynecounty200.com
The Passport Program is planned to start around May 1st and go to November 1st.
Through a true community effort, the Sodus Bay Historical Society opened the doors of the Sodus Bay Lighthouse Museum on July 4, 1985. This museum is one of the most frequently visited attractions in Wayne County, New York, receiving over 20,000 visitors from all over the world each year! In 1976, the Lighthouse was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.
On May 26, 1824, Congress approved a lighthouse located on Sodus Bay in Sodus Point, NY. Building costs were estimated to be $4500.00 and the government allotted that amount for the building of the lighthouse.
A publicly approved parcel of land was purchased from William Wickham for $68.75 and that is where the original Sodus Bay Light was built in 1825. It was of conical construction and was equipped with all of the necessities that a lighthouse of that time frame would need.
In 1868 an inspection of the lighthouse showed many infirmities and other problems like leaky roofing and poor walls. This spelled the end of the original Sodus Bay Lighthouse.
Congress again appropriated money to build a lighthouse at Sodus Bay, this time to the tune of $14,000. The lighthouse is of the square-integral type made of limestone mined at the Kingston quarries. It is equipped with a fourth-order Fresnel lens. After the new tower was completed on June 30, 1871, the old tower from 1825 was demolished.
The stone from it was used to build a jetty to protect the shoreline in front of the new lighthouse. The new lighthouse was very similar to the lighthouse at Stony Point, also on the Great Lakes.
The lighthouse was discontinued and the lens was removed in 1901.
In 1976 the lighthouse was listed in the National Registry of Historic Places. In 1984 the lighthouse was given to the Town of Sodus and during the next year the bank in front of the lighthouse was rebuilt to retard the erosion of the land around the lighthouse.
In 1988 the Fresnel lens was returned to the tower. Today the lighthouse serves as a Maritime Museum run and maintained by the Sodus Bay Historical Society. The Lighthouse is located at 7606 North Ontario Street in Sodus Point.
https://www.sodusbaylighthouse.org/