Lighthouses Of The Florida Keys

An updated historical account of the Florida Keys lighthouses full of history and legend.

The Florida Keys possess a staggering wealth of lighthouses--nine in all, from the remote iron light at Fowey Rocks to classic brick structures at Key West and Loggerhead Key. In the 1820s, the US government began constructing lighthouses to aid mariners navigating the dangerous Florida Reef. While some of the original lights were subsequently destroyed in dramatic circumstances, most that followed, including Carysfort Reef, Alligator Reef, Sombrero Key, Sand Key, and American Shoal, survived intense tropical weather and even major hurricanes. Among the lighthouse keepers were remarkable women who succeeded in a profession usually reserved for men.

Beautiful photographs, maps, and descriptions of the fabled reef lights forming a 3,000-mile semicircle from Key West, Florida, to Corpus Christi, Texas.

Sporting the second-longest coastline in the United States, Florida has over 8,000 miles of sparkling beaches and waterfront property. This valuable landscape and the region's position between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico made Florida key in the early expansion of American trade routes, but the state's several capes and dangerous reefs, rocks, and shoals made travel quite perilous to unwary mariners. When commerce and traffic began to grow between ports on the East Coast and along the Gulf of Mexico in the nineteenth century, it became necessary to construct aids to navigation along the state's long and treacherous coast. Lighthouses were the solution. Constructed in a variety of styles and sizes, Florida's lighthouses were erected on what, at the time, were some of the most desolate regions of the southeastern United States and included lonely offshore islands. Manned and inhabited by vigilant keepers and their families, these towers illuminated the dark seas and provided the beacon that guided lost travelers. Large brick structures watched over St. Augustine, Pensacola, and Ponce de Leon Inlet; iron skeletons towered over Crooked River and Hillsboro Inlet; and screwpile lighthouses stood as sentinels in the waters off the Florida Keys.

A collection of the histories of Florida's light stations by different authors, each an authority on a particular lighthouse, this book is chock-full of information on dates of construction and operation, foundation materials, lighting equipment, and more. Complete directions to each lighthouse site are included, as well as names, addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, websites of lighthouse organizations. Preface by Wayne Wheeler, president of the United States Lighthouse Society, as well as a full glossary, bibliography, and index.

Includes approximately 40 lighthouses, maps, and details on how to visit them.