Hope Town

Hope Town is one of the districts of the Bahamas, on the Abaco islands as well as a small village on Elbow Cay, located in Abaco. Golf carts are the main source of transportation, and most of the supplies for the area are brought in by barge each week. In Hope Town, neither cars nor golf carts are permitted in the main part of town. Only bicycles and walking are permitted. Cars and golf carts are permitted on the outskirts of town, however. All the buildings that are built must adhere to Bahamian Architecture at the discretion of Town Planning. The seat of the Hope Town District Council is in Hope Town, and most of the meetings are held there.

Hope Town features one of the last operational kerosene-fueled lighthouses in the World. This lighthouse was built in 1862 and became operational two years later, it is striped horizontally red and white. Its light can be seen from 23 nmi (43 km) away.

The Hope Town Lighthouse is one of only three Manual Lighthouses left in the World. It has a spring mechanism that has to be hand cranked every several hours to maintain the sequence of five white flashes every 15 seconds. The lamp burns kerosene oil with a wick and mantle. The light is then focused as it passes through the optics of a first order Fresnel lens which floats on a bed of mercury.