Summersville Lake gears up for Saturday’s 12th annual Lighthouse Festival

By Jenny Harnish, RealWV

National Lighthouse Day was held on August 7th, and the folks at Summersville Lake Retreat and Lighthouse in Mt. Nebo are gearing up to celebrate the 12th Annual Lighthouse Festival on Saturday, August 9th.

The event features local craft vendors, live bands, a human slot machine and food trucks and tours of West Virginia’s only working lighthouse. The festival is a charitable event and this year it benefits the Summersville Homeless Commission. 

The lighthouse started as a joke. Owner Dave Ridgeway said wind farm workers were staying at the campground and the campground owner at the time joked with them that if they lost a part of one of the wind towers he’d like to have it. Eventually he was able to acquire the top third section of a wind tower from the Beech Ridge Wind Farm, about 63 miles from Summersville. 

Ridgeway said it was a big community effort to put the lighthouse up. It took them several years to figure out how to stand it up and they teamed up with local schools to design and weld the staircase. The 122 spiral steps are 12 ft wide at the bottom and 8 ft wide at the top. They were designed by students at The Fayette Institute of Technology and Nicholas County Career & Technical Center. It officially opened in 2013. 

The lighthouse is open year round for tours and provides navigation to the airport and helicopters. The lighthouse’s rotational beacon casts a 30-mile-long beam of light.