In 1827 the first shipment of sweet potatoes from farmers on the Eastern Shore was sent to New York City aboard the schooner Providence under the command of Captain Lewis Matthews from Thomas's Wharf on the Machipongo River.

One of the few deep-water ports on the sea side of the Delmarva Peninsula, vessels traveling between Norfolk and New York City began frequenting Thomas's Wharf to load produce during the growing season.

This new lighthouse, the second tallest in the United States at 194 feet, was built more than a half mile back from the ocean in a clearing in the dense pine forest that once covered most of Hog Island.

The barrier island continued to shift westward at a rapid rate and in 1948 this second lighthouse was deactivated by the Coast Guard as the waves lapping at its base threatened to bring it down.

The site where the Hog Island Light station once stood near the village of Broadwater long ago vanished beneath the waves and is now nearly a mile out to sea, but the 10-foot high first-order Fresnel lens, produced by the Henry-LePaute Company in France, and originally installed in the second Cape Charles Lighthouse before being transferred to Hog Island in 1895, was removed from the lighthouse and preserved when the light station was deactivated.

The lens was first displayed at the Mariners' Museum in Newport News; in 2004 it was moved to an enclosed pavilion designed to resemble the lighthouse's lantern room on the Portsmouth, Virginia waterfront.