Now, the lighthouse is opening to visitors for the second time in its 134-year history, giving them a chance to set foot on a national landmark that until last year they could only see from their boats.

"This is so cool," said Amanda Hurt Fegeley, an Annapolitan who went out to the lighthouse last weekend. "It's an honor to be able to step aboard a structure that's so significant to the Chesapeake Bay."

The Annapolis Maritime Museum took about 600 visitors to Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse last year. In its second year, the museum hopes the lighthouse will draw 1,000 visitors, said Jeff Holland, the museum's director.

The trip isn't cheap - it costs $70 per person. Most of that money goes toward the five-mile boat ride out to the lighthouse, and what remains will be used for preserving and restoring the structure, Mr. Holland said.

"Seventy bucks is an awful lot, but anyone who's been out there agrees it's worth the price," he said.

About 60 percent of last year's visitors to Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse were locals, he said. Many visited because they're fascinated with the location, the history, the lives of the lighthouse keepers. Others just love lighthouses.

"There's a whole category of lighthouse aficionados, kind of like Trekkies," he said.

The tour begins with a safety video at the maritime museum's Barge House in Eastport. Mr. Holland calls the trip "adventure travel," and stresses participants need to be at least 12 years old and 4 feet tall.

Passengers then board the Sharps Island boat, 18 to a tour, and after about 30 minutes on the water, dock at the lighthouse.

A white cottage with six sides and a red roof, the lighthouse perches above about 8 feet of green water on the shoal. It was built on the bay in 1875, the answer to two earlier stone lighthouses that were built on the spit of land at Thomas Point but collapsed, Mr. Holland said.

This lighthouse was built on screw-piles driven deep into the mud of the bay. Once, more than 40 such lighthouses glittered across the eastern seaboard; today the Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse is the only one left standing in its original location.

Lighthouse keepers originally manned the structure, living in it for two weeks at a time. At night they lit the whale-oil lamps that shone out over the water; during the day they fished and kept logs of passing ships. In one account, a lighthouse keeper reported his co-keeper was going mad from cabin fever, Mr. Holland said.

Once on board the lighthouse's platform, visitors climb up a ladder into main rooms, which include a kitchen and parlor, then up a spiral staircase to the second floor and another ladder to the light itself.

Once brightly whitewashed and furnished, the rooms inside are now dusty and worn. No keepers have lived in the lighthouse since the Coast Guard automated it in 1986, Mr. Holland said.

But now, volunteers from the national Lighthouse Society are restoring the rooms and soon they will look as they originally did, said Henry Gonzalez, vice president of the nonprofit U.S. Lighthouse Society.

It's expensive both to restore and maintain it, Mr. Holland said. The greatest danger is the ice that builds up on the bay and crashes into the lighthouse's base in the winter. One metal ice breaker and piles of rocks around the lighthouse help protect it.

"To us, it is very special," Mr. Gonzalez said. "It's also an icon of the Chesapeake Bay, near the sailing capital of the world. That's why we're doing it."

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Lighthouse tours will run on Saturdays and Sundays every other weekend from May 17 through September. For information or to book a tour, call 800-690-5080 or visit www.thomaspointlighthouse.org.