Like steam locomotives, buffalo nickels, and Decoration Day doubleheaders, manned lighthouses have gradually disappeared into the dustbin of history.

Gone is the image of the lonely lighthouse keeper, racing up the winding stairs of a circular tower to light lanterns for navigators in storm-tossed seas.

Although automation has supplanted people power in lighthouse annals, many of the structures still stand — silent stone sentinels that guard creeks, rivers, estuaries and bays, plus vast stretches of coastline on both ends of the continent.

Nowhere is that more obvious than along the Maryland shores of the Chesapeake, a meandering bay with 8,700 miles of shoreline — more than the Atlantic and Pacific coasts combined.

To guide shipping through treacherous shoals and winding channels to safe ports and harbors, 44 lighthouses were built during the 88-year span of 1822 to 1910. All 25 that remain are automated, with others dismantled and replaced by small, inexpensive, automated beacons maintained by the U.S. Coast Guard. But the memories of the great lighthouses linger.

Maryland’s lighthouses, like the people who once ran them, come in all sizes, shapes, and colors. Some tower high above the bay, warning of a confluence of currents, while others, anchored offshore, mark rocks or reefs dangerous to shipping. Many are small clanging buoys, with bells ringing in cadence to the rhythm of the surf, while a few are floating lightships, capable of moving from place to place under their own power.

Some lighthouses are exactly that — vertical light towers built on top of horizontal houses — while others are masonry towers with a singular purpose. But all had the same mission.

The oldest continuously operated beacon in the state is the Concord Point Lighthouse in Havre de Grace, a community with more than 800 historic structures.

The 1827 tower stands 36 feet high — a foot shorter than the Green Monster in Boston’s Fenway Park. Once illuminated by nine whale-oil lamps with tin reflectors, it was electrified in 1920, decommissioned in 1975, and restored four years later.

The lighthouse stands on land overlooking the confluence of the Susquehanna River and the northern Chesapeake Bay. Nearby are a potato cannon fired at the British during the War of 1812 and a duck decoy museum.

The Turkey Point Light, near the town of North East in Cecil County, is even more imposing. The conical brick tower is only 29 feet high but sits atop a 100-foot bluff above the Elk and Northeast Rivers, near the head of the bay. The only Chesapeake lighthouses with higher focal points are in Virginia, at Cape Henry (164 ft.) and Cape Charles (191 ft.).

Between 1832, when it was built, and 1948, when it was automated, Turkey Point was maintained by a succession of famous faces, including Fannie Salter, the last female lighthouse keeper in the United States (1925–1947).

When fog shrouded the bay, she had to clang a 1,000-pound bell with a 50-pound clanger. Although it was mechanized, it didn’t always work. Salter once had to clang the bell manually, four times per minute for 55 minutes, when she spotted a steamer struggling through pea-soup fog.

Fog wasn’t the only problem at Turkey Point. The station was so isolated — 14 miles over poor roads to the nearest store — that keepers had to double as farmers, raising food-producing animals and growing their own produce.

Automation didn’t arrive at Thomas Point Shoal, the last manned lighthouse on the Chesapeake Bay, until 1986. The offshore lighthouse, a short boat ride from Annapolis via the Severn River, is now controlled by radio from Baltimore. The 1875 structure is the last remaining lighthouse with a screwpile base — a method used to anchor 42 lighthouses in 54 years.

Although three other screwpiles survive in museums, their iron anchorings were often victimized by ice floes. Caisson construction, used in later anchorings, involved a cylindrical base sunk deep into the muddy bottom and filled with concrete ballast.

Even that wasn’t foolproof, however: the round caisson lighthouse at Sharps Island, located off the southern tip of Tilghman Island on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, is known for its pronounced list (the angle of the light was adjusted to compensate). It’s Maryland’s answer to the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Another 1882 lighthouse — a brick house anchored by caisson — marks Sandy Point Shoal, near the west side of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge near Annapolis.

Lighthouses may be endangered species elsewhere, but not in Maryland.

The Baltimore Light, offshore at the mouth of the Magothy River, is a white, two-story structure that was the last lighthouse built on the bay (1910). Once atomic-powered, it is now dependent upon solar energy, as are many of the other Chesapeake Bay beacons.

Craighill Channel, on the northwestern shore of the bay, has a family of four active lighthouses: one with two vertical lights, another known for its height (105 ft.) and two others once illuminated by the headlights from steam locomotives. At Solomons Lump, the original structure was sheared off its foundation by heavy ice and tipped over. It was later rebuilt with a different design.

There are other great names in the bay: Bloody Point Bar, Fishing Battery, and even Point No Point — not to be confused with an Andy Rooney monologue.

The Lightship Chesapeake, now part of the Baltimore Maritime Museum, warned of navigational hazards, provided weather information, helped in rescue operations, and spent the Second World War guarding the entrance to the Cape Cod Canal. Crews of 16 worked rotating two-week shifts in conditions that ranged from utter boredom to total terror. The bright red ship, in active service from 1933 to 1971, is now a National Historic Landmark.

An 1879 screwpile lighthouse is the showcase of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, an 18-acre waterfront campus with 80 historic vessels and nine exhibit buildings, in the Eastern Shore resort town of St. Michaels. When the late-afternoon sun shines on the transplanted Hooper Strait structure, it makes one of the finest photo ops on the Eastern Shore.

The U.S. Lighthouse Society, founded in 1984, restores old lighthouses and lightships, runs tours, keeps photo archives, and provides speakers. The $35 membership includes a subscription to The Keeper’s Log, a 48-page quarterly. Write U.S. Lighthouse Society, 244 Kearny St., 5th floor, San Francisco, CA 94108, or call 415-362-7255.

For information about lighthouses on the Chesapeake Bay, contact the Maryland Office of Tourism at www.mdisfun.org or the Annapolis and Anne Arundel County CVB at www.visitannapolis.org.