The lower Delaware River in the Philadelphia area is not a place where you would expect to find historic lighthouses, but that’s exactly what you’ll find in the nearby village of Paulsboro, NJ. Located directly across the Delaware from Philadelphia International Airport, the Tinicum Island Rear Range Light is a significant lighthouse built in 1880 to mark a section of the navigable waterway along the Paulsboro riverfront south of Philadelphia. So what exactly is a “rear range” light? Lights such as this one work in tandem with a second light, known as a “front range” light and when the two are aligned back-to-back in a certain orientation along the river, they combine to form a pathway for ships to follow in order to avoid navigable hazards. In this case, the tandem light setup was developed to help craft navigate around Little Tinicum Island in the middle of the river nearby. The rear range light here in Paulsboro is the more famous of the two and it is this light that is featur...
Because every road has a story.