Hope Town features one of the last operational kerosene-fueled lighthouses in the world. This lighthouse was built in 1862 and became operational two years later, it is striped horizontally red and white. Its light can be seen from 23 nmi (43 km) away.

The Elbow Cay Lighthouse is one of only three manual lighthouses left in the world. It has a weight mechanism that has to be hand cranked every several hours to maintain the sequence of five white flashes every 15 seconds. The lamp burns kerosene oil with a wick and mantle, at the rate of 1 gallon per night. The light is then focused as it passes through the optics of a first order Fresnel lens which floats on a bed of mercury.

More about the history of the lighthouse can be found here on the Elbow Reef Lighthouse Society history page.