The site of the two lighthouse towers at Sandy Hook, originally built to help ships navigate the entrance to the New York Harbor, have played an outsized role in history.
In 1893 the first official reading of the Pledge of Allegiance occurred here around the 135-foot Liberty Pole. It is also where Guglielmo Marconi set up his wireless telegraph in 1899. Then in 1935, it was the place where the Army tested its Mystery Ray—what is now known as radar.
It is also here that a mystery cannon was unearthed, believed to be of Dutch origin. Some speculate it may have come from a pirate ship; others think that it was a signal cannon used by the British when they occupied Sandy Hook during the Revolutionary War.
Some unknown bodies have also been discovered here. In 1850 a skeleton was found sitting at a table in a hidden room under the keeper's house. In the mid-1900's the corpses of four men and one woman were discovered buried at the base of the lighthouse.