This island on which this lighthouse sits got its name from colonial New York, when prisoners were chained to the rocks during low tide.On March 3, 1847, the United States Congress appropriated $25,000 for creation of Execution Rocks Lighthouse.
Before being executed for murder, serial killer Carl Panzram claimed in a posthumous autobiography that in the summer of 1920 that he raped and killed a total of ten sailors and dumped their bodies at sea near Execution Rocks Light.