The classic red-and-white lighthouse is still operated by the Canadian Coast Guard, and is situated on an extensive granite outcrop at Peggys Point, immediately south of the village and its cove.

[2] Visitors may explore the granite outcrop on Peggys Point around the lighthouse; despite numerous signs warning of unpredictable surf (including one on a bronze plaque on the lighthouse itself), several visitors each year are swept off the rocks by waves, sometimes drowning.

[4] The first lighthouse at Peggys Cove was built in 1868 and was a wooden house with a beacon on the roof.

At sundown, the keeper lit a kerosene oil lamp magnified by a catoptric reflector (a silver-plated mirror) creating the red beacon light marking the eastern entrance to St. Margarets Bay.

It is made of reinforced concrete but retains the eight-sided shape of earlier generations of wooden light towers.