Hope Town is home to the beautiful red candy striped lighthouse that is one of the most photographed in the world. It was built in 1863 by the British Imperial Lighthouse Service to mark the reef in the Atlantic which lies just to the east of the settlement. The reef was a graveyard for many ships prior to the lighthouse being built. This lighthouse is kerosene powered and one of only a handful of its kind still in existence in the world. Its beam of light can be seen for twenty miles. The one room post office is housed upstairs in an old blue two story building at the end of the south public dock. There are no typical boxes for rent here - everything arrives in care of general delivery. Along the Queens Highway, the narrow concrete main lane, there are old loyalist’s cottages resembling New England that have been lovingly restored.