Keeper of the light

Published 11:16 am Wednesday, April 30, 2025

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Meghan Agresto takes in the glorious view from the lens room of the Currituck Beach Lighthouse. Currituck is a first-order lighthouse, having the largest of seven Fresnel lens sizes. Photo: Jess Abel, UNC-Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences

Meghan Agresto and her dog, Maggie. Photo: Jess Abel, UNC-Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences

Meghan Agresto enjoys a laugh in her storehouse-turned-office with Maggie, her constant companion and unofficial “bark ranger,” at her feet. Photo: Jess Abel, UNC-Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences

The Currituck Sound is 40 miles long. Meghan Agresto’s two sons grew up with 39 acres of sand and sound as their playground. Photo: Jess Abel, UNC-Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences

Meghan Agresto often begins her mornings by trekking to the top of the lighthouse. Photo: Jess Abel, UNC-Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences

For a fee of $13, you can climb 220 steps to the top and take in a bird’s-eye view of Currituck Sound, the Atlantic Ocean and the northern Outer Banks. Photo: Jess Abel, UNC-Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences

The Currituck Beach Lighthouse was the last brick-and-mortar lighthouse to be constructed on the Outer Banks. Photo: Jess Abel, UNC-Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences

Meghan Agresto and her friend Sylvia Wolff founded a public charter school in 2012 in the original 1890s-era school building that was used by lighthouse keeper families. Photo: Jess Abel, UNC-Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences

Corolla wild horses, the official state horses of North Carolina, can be spotted on the sandy 11-mile stretch of N.C. Highway 12 accessible via 4-by-4 vehicles. Photo: Jess Abel, UNC-Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences

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By Kim Weaver Spurr, UNC-Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences

Carolina double alumna Meghan Agresto has been the lighthouse site manager for the Currituck Beach Lighthouse in Corolla for 20 years.

Meghan Agresto leads the way up the winding metal staircase 220 steps to the top of the Currituck Beach Lighthouse. Her dog Maggie — a constant companion and junior lighthouse keeper of sorts — trails closely behind.

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Agresto pushes open a squeaky metal door that reveals a circular balcony and an expansive, bird’s-eye view of Currituck Sound, the Atlantic Ocean and the northern Outer Banks. It’s gusty at 162 feet, as sunlight breaks through the clouds and twinkles off the sound.

Agresto has been the lighthouse keeper, along with partner Luis Garcia, for 20 years. Currituck Beach Lighthouse is the only North Carolina lighthouse with an acting keeper and family, and the duo is among the longest-serving keepers in the tower’s history. Agresto has climbed these same steps countless times, often beginning her morning in solitude by climbing to the top.

The view never gets old.

“I love it every time,” she said.

A circuitous path

Just like the twisty staircase to the top, Agresto has traveled a circuitous path to get here.

The simple question of “where did you grow up?” is not so simple.

“It’s a lot,” she said, laughing. “I was born to an Italian, New York-raised dad and a Rhode Island Irish mom in Ohio, because my dad had received his Ph.D., and he took a job at Kenyon College.”

Agresto moved to Chapel Hill for pre-K and elementary school, when her dad, John, took a job at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park. Meanwhile her mom, Catherine, completed her library science degree at Carolina in 1982.

The family next moved to Washington, D.C., and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Agresto enrolled at Carolina in 1992, then left a year later to spend time abroad.

“I went to Greece for a year to learn modern Greek, because I had declared myself a classics major,” she said. “I loved all of my classics professors. I started taking Latin in sixth grade in Catholic school in D.C., and it all made sense to me.”

Years later, she would make her way back to Greece, this time on a Fulbright Scholarship.

The adventure-hungry Agresto came back to Carolina for her sophomore year. She was a member of the rowing team and spent her junior year in Spain with the UNC in Sevilla Program.

“Someone asked me the other day, ‘if you had a superpower, what would it be?’” said Agresto, who speaks Spanish fluently. “And I said, ‘a language acquisition superpower.’”

She graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1997 with a classics major, and after graduation, moved to Alaska for the summer to work in Denali National Park.

Eventually, Agresto found her way back to Chapel Hill and back to school, graduating with a master’s degree in social work in 2005.

It was while working at the Family Violence Prevention Center in Chapel Hill with her friend Jenn Barr that Agresto’s life was about to change.

Barr had left the center to take a job as lighthouse keeper at the Currituck Beach Lighthouse, which had been managed by the nonprofit Outer Banks Conservationists since 1980. Two years later, Barr became pregnant, and she and her husband decided they didn’t want to raise a family in such a remote place. In Corolla, the northern tip of the Outer Banks, the paved two-lane N.C. Highway 12 ends in sand. Four-wheel-drive travelers can continue the “highway” on shoreline about 11 miles to the Virginia state line, where they’ll often spot Corolla wild horses along the way.

When the lighthouse job became available, Agresto jumped at the chance to make her pitch to the nonprofit board.

“It was a combination of everything I loved, and I knew I would fit extremely well in this world,” she said. “I argued that the pairing of my two Carolina degrees made me the perfect fit for a preservation/history/humanities/people job on the Outer Banks.”

What to love about a lighthouse

Until the lighthouse came into service on Dec. 1, 1875, Currituck Beach was the last “dark space” to be illuminated on the East Coast. Its unpainted red brick “day marker” distinguished it from other painted, patterned lighthouses. Its first-order Fresnel lens — one of only a few in the United States still in use — shines for 18 nautical miles with a “night marker” of three seconds on, 17 seconds off.

Agresto has been writing a book about the history of the lighthouse, off and on, over the last two decades. She’s made several research trips to the National Archives in Washington. As site manager, she takes care of the lighthouse, hires and trains tour guides, maintains the historic property and more.

Why is the public so captivated with lighthouses? Agresto’s face lights up at the question.

In her cozy storehouse-building-turned-office, Agresto nurses a mug of hot brew from The Kind Cup, a nearby coffee shop. She scrolls through a long list she’s been keeping on her phone, Maggie resting at her feet.

“I’m so glad you asked, because there are so many ways to think about this,” she said.

Here are just a few, from Agresto’s list:

No two lighthouses are alike.
Like the stars, they are steadfast.
They are harbors of solitude.
They are off the beaten path.
They can endure day-to-day hardships.
They give you that bird’s-eye view.
They are a comfort in the dark.

Agresto normally talks a mile a minute, maybe more like 10 miles a minute. Her voice is forever raspy (think of greeting about 80,000 climbers a year, including the nearly 70 different presentations she and docents will give to school groups this spring.) But she stops to show off a picture on her phone that she took inside the lighthouse that morning, with beams of light bouncing off the brick walls.

“Look how cool the light is!” she exclaimed. “When I visited Jenn when she was the lighthouse keeper, I couldn’t imagine that she got to climb this every day. There’s a feeling that you get — it’s amazing. People who visit talk about the view, but for me, it’s the beauty of the interior, too.”

Agresto is planning a 150th anniversary celebration of the lighthouse for the end of this year.

A light in the community

Just like the lighthouse itself, Agresto has been a beacon of steadfast light in her community.

She moved to Corolla with a toddler when she first took the job as lighthouse keeper; another son would come later. She raised Paolo and Benicio — now grown — in a house right on the property, with 39 acres of sand and sound as their playground.

When the boys were young, Corolla had no school of its own.

“I talked to people who lived here, and their kids were being put on a bus at 5:30 a.m. to go to Jarvisburg (about 35 miles away),” she said. “I didn’t want them to be on a bus for three to four hours a day. I just thought that was crazy.”

Agresto and her friend Sylvia Wolff began the process of founding a school in Corolla. Thanks to their efforts — and with community support — Water’s Edge Village School opened in 2012, just yards from the lighthouse in the original 1890s-era building that was a former school for keepers’ children.

Today Wolff is the public charter school’s principal, and Agresto is president of the board of directors. The school had 15 students in its first year, providing education for kindergarten through sixth grade, eventually expanding to eighth grade. The board is wrapping up a major $2.1 million capital campaign to open an additional building, which is expected to be completed this spring. The school will be able to serve about 60 students once the new building opens.

It is not lost on Agresto that her once very global life has become hyper-local. And that’s just fine with her.

“I think we all reach that point where we think, ‘what can I do on this planet?’” said Agresto. She notes that soon she’ll have to get biscuits out of the freezer for a soup meet-and-greet lunch with the Water’s Edge teachers and parents. “If you can’t do it locally, maybe you’re not going to do it. In the end, if you made your friends’ and family’s lives better, what else can we hope for?”

Agresto has loved seeing her kids grow up here. She added that the sense of community, the privilege of preserving history, is part of the reason why she has stayed for 20 years.

“Part of the goal of Outer Banks Conservationists is to conserve a sense of place, which is a hard thing to put a finger on, isn’t it?” she said, musing. “It’s sort of magic adjacent.”

Learn more about the Currituck Beach Lighthouse at obcinc.org.

Story by Kim Weaver Spurr, photos by Jess Abel, UNC-Chapel Hill College of Arts and Sciences.

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