The Hog Island Light was a lighthouse roughly marking its eponymous island, and thus the north side of the Great Machipongo Inlet on the Virginia

Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

 coast.

History

There have been two lights at this location, a barrier island

Barrier island

Barrier islands, a coastal landform and a type of barrier system, are relatively narrow strips of sand that parallel the mainland coast. They usually occur in chains, consisting of anything from a few islands to more than a dozen...

 south east of Exmore, Virginia

Exmore, Virginia

Exmore is a town in Northampton County on the Eastern Shore of the U.S. state of Virginia. The population was 1,136 at the 2000 census. Exmore was named after the number of railroad stops left until reaching Cape Charles, the southernmost point of the Eastern Shore peninsula...

. The first light was erected in 1853 and consisted of a stone tower with a keeper's dwelling adjacent to it. It was ostensibly equipped with a first-order fresnel lens

Fresnel lens

A Fresnel lens is a type of lens originally developed by French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel for lighthouses.The design allows the construction of lenses of large aperture and short focal length without the mass and volume of material that would be required by a lens of conventional design...

, though a report in 1870 stated that it had been assigned a fourth order lens instead.

Erosion of the island eventually endangered the first light, and in 1896 a steel skeletal tower was erected to replace it. The island continued to shift and in 1948 this second lighthouse was demolished, as the waves threatened to bring it down. The first order lens was first displayed at the Newport News Mariners Museum; in 2004 it was moved to an enclosed pavilion on the Portsmouth, Virginia

Portsmouth, Virginia

Portsmouth is located in the Hampton Roads metropolitan area of the U.S. Commonwealth of Virginia. As of 2010, the city had a total population of 95,535.The Norfolk Naval Shipyard, often called the Norfolk Navy Yard, is a historic and active U.S...

waterfront.
.