We started our trip in Atlantic Highlands. The Navesink Twin Lights is a non-operational lighthouse and museum located in Highlands, Monmouth County, New Jersey, United States, overlooking Sandy Hook Bay, the entrance to the New York Harbor and the Atlantic Ocean. The Twin Lights, as the name implies, are a pair of beacons located 246 feet (75 m) above sea level on the headlands of the Navesink Highlands.
In 1962, the State of New Jersey acquired Twin Lights. At the current museum facility, tours of the lighthouse, a climb of the North Tower and its expansive ocean view, and a view of the lighthouse equipment, await visitors. Twin Lights is listed on the State and National Register of Historic Places.
The Twin Lights State Historic Site is part of the New Jersey Coastal Heritage Trail Route.
Fort Hancock is a former United States Army fort at Sandy Hook in Middletown Township New Jersey. The coastal artillery base defended the Atlantic coast and the entrance to New York Harbor. Between 1874 and 1919, Fort Hancock was operated in conjunction with the US Army's Sandy Hook Proving Ground. It is now part of Fort Hancock Memorial Park.
The Sandy Hook Light, the oldest working lighthouse in the United States, is located on the grounds of Fort Hancock.
In 1893, Fort Hancock installed the nation's first disappearing gun battery at Battery Potter. In the late 1950s anti-aircraft missiles from Project Nike were based at the fort.
Fort Hancock was decommissioned in 1974. It is now part of the National Parks of New York Harbor under the National Park System. A museum is managed as part of the Sandy Hook Unit of Gateway National Recreation Area. In 2013, the Park Service introduced Nubian goats to the fort in order to clear away poison ivy that has been growing unchecked on the six-acre property for about 40 years.