Frying Pan Shoals Light – Thirty-two miles off the coast of Bald Head Island, the Frying Pan Tower stands as a sentinel for the Carolinas as Hurricane Dorian approaches the coast.

Frying Pan Shoals Light Tower is a decommissioned lighthouse located on the Frying Pan Shoals approximately 39 miles (63 km) southeast of Southport, North Carolina and 32 miles (51 km) from Bald Head Island, North Carolina.

The light tower is modeled after a steel oil drilling platform, known as a “Texas tower”, on top of four steel legs that was engineered to be used as a lighthouse housing several Coast Guard members. The 80-foot (24 m) light tower marks the shoals at the confluence of the Cape Fear River and the Atlantic Ocean.

The Frying Pan Tower, no longer a commissioned lightstation, was left abandoned until 2010 when Richard Neal, a software engineer from Mint Hill, NC purchased the Tower on a government surplus sale site.