…the St. Augustine Lighthouse
and the Cape Canaveral Lighthouse
Lighthouse #1- The St. Augustine Lighthouse
The 165-foot tall St.
Augustine Lighthouse was constructed in 1874 and has 219 steps. The actual site
was established all the way back in 1823. Let’s see what we can learn about the
lighthouse today.
Pedro Menendez de Aviles
landed on the shores of northeastern Florida in the year 1565. This
establishment grew in importance to Spain as a shipping port. In the 1580s, a
wooden watchtower was built on Anastasia Island, though it wasn’t the actual
St. Augustine Lighthouse.
Pedro Menendez de Aviles decided to build a wooden tower on the northern end of
Anastasia Island. The tower was to be watched over by a Spanish soldier to see
which ships would come in on shore. The tower also served as a landmark for
sailors attempting to locate the town from the sea. The watchtower was meant to
guide ships to the port, but it also showed the way for Sir Francis Drake in
1586. Drake, when seeing the tower, knew he had reached the settlement of St.
Augustine and pillaged as well as burned the city to shambles.
In 1683, the Spanish replaced
the wooden tower with a coquina structure. It included a watchtower,
guardhouse, well, and storage house for ammunition. This tower was named a “lighthouse”
in 1821 when St. Augustine was the capitol of Florida along with Pensacola.
However, the second tower did
not provide the light that people out at sea needed to guide their ships and
cargo. In 1871, plans were made to construct the current lighthouse, which was
completed in 1874. This tower has been used as a lookout tower during the
Spanish-American War, which took place in 1898.
The sturdy brick lighthouse
has strong black-and-white diagonal day-mark stripes along with a stark-red
light tower. There are 1.2 million bricks that make up the structure of the
lighthouse. The lighthouse has a very strong presence, and it can be seen from
many different locations around the St. Augustine community. Its beacon has a white
lens, and when the lens is lit, it flashes brightly every 60 seconds. The lens
is so incredibly powerful that when it was first installed and the lens did not
move, the sun glare off the lens would start brush fires around the lighthouse.
The sunlight hitting the lens would damage the light source inside of it. In
1885, the lighthouse board changed the lamp fuel to kerosene, which had five
wicks. In 1936, the lighthouse was the very first to be powered by electricity.
Today, the fresnel lens inside stands 9.5 feet tall and contains 370 prisms.
Photos-
http://www.staugustinelighthouse.com/exh_vtour.php
Lighthouse #2- Cape Canaveral Lighthouse
The Cape Canaveral Lighthouse that
stands today is not the first lighthouse that was built on the cape. The
original was a 65-foot brick tower that was constructed in 1848. The original
tower’s light was produced by a set of fifteen lamps backed by 21-inch
reflectors. The first lighthouse keeper was Nathaniel Scobie, though he quite
quickly abandoned his position due to the threat of an attack from Seminole
Indians.
In 1860, it was decided that a
new 160-foot tower would be constructed. It would have metal plates with a
brick lining. However, construction could not begin until after the Civil War,
and that war lasted from the years of 1861-1865. The tower that was constructed
after the Civil War was made up of brick and was built not too far from the
original lighthouse. There was room for the lightkeeper to live inside the
tower. For the first time on May 10, 1868, the first-order fresnel lens located
inside the beacon of the tower was lit for the first time.
The lighthouse was originally
painted white and did not receive its distinctive black bands until 1873. Living
in the tower eventually became unbearable during the extremely warm and humid
summer months, so the lightkeepers constructed their own makeshift homes near
the tower. In 1876, $12,000 was given so lightkeepers could have their own
residences.
One very large difference
between the Cape Canaveral Lighthouse and the St. Augustine Lighthouse was that
the two Cape Canaveral towers that were constructed stood side by side for
years. St. Augustine’s first towers had been demolished. However, the decision
was made to relocate the first smaller tower up the coast because of erosion. It
replaced another lighthouse that was blown up and used as fill material at the
new site.
In 1993, the fresnel lens was
removed from the tower of the Cape Canaveral Lighthouse because the lens was
extremely strong and shook the lens to pieces. Several prisms had fallen out of
the framework.
The lighthouse became property of the United States Air Force in 2000, and it is not open to the public.
See photos- http://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=364