NC EOG Practice Test 1

Moving a Giant

¹For more than a hundred years, the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse has stood on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, warning ships away from the dangerous shallow waters off the coast. Its black-and-white spiral stripes make it easy to spot during the day, and its light can be seen far out at sea at night. Nearly 200 feet tall, it is the tallest brick lighthouse in the United States.

²When the lighthouse was completed in 1870, it stood about 1,500 feet from the ocean. But the Outer Banks are made of sand, and sand does not stay put. Storms and waves slowly carried the beach away, a little more each year. By the 1970s, the ocean's edge was only about 120 feet from the tower. In bad storms, waves splashed close to its base. If nothing changed, the lighthouse would one day fall into the sea.

³People argued about what to do. Some wanted to build a seawall around the lighthouse to hold back the waves. Others wanted to relocate the tower to a safer spot farther from the water. In the late 1980s, a group of scientists studied the problem. They explained that a wall might protect the tower for a while, but the beach around it would keep wearing away. In time, the lighthouse could end up standing alone in the ocean. The scientists recommended moving it.

⁴Moving a brick tower that weighed about 4,830 tons was not a simple job. Engineers had to keep it from cracking or tipping over. First, workers cut the tower away from its old foundation. Then hydraulic jacks lifted the whole lighthouse about six feet into the air and set it on a steel frame with rollers underneath.

⁵Next, workers laid a path of steel track beams leading away from the shore. Machines called push jacks shoved the frame forward along the track about five feet at a time. After each push, crews picked up track from behind the tower and laid it down again in front. Three groups of hydraulic jacks under the tower kept it level as it rolled over the uneven ground.

⁶The move began on June 17, 1999. Each day the lighthouse crept a little farther from the sea, and crowds gathered to watch. On July 9, the tower reached its new foundation, about 2,900 feet from where it had started. In all, the trip took about three weeks. It now stands about 1,600 feet from the ocean, about the same distance it had when it was first built. The light shone again that November.

⁷Today, visitors can still climb the lighthouse's steps and look out over the Atlantic. Many of them have no idea that the tower they are standing in once traveled more than half a mile across the sand.