Category: Island
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Tybee Island Light Station
Tybee Island, Georgia, USA (July 2006) The Tybee Island light station sits a pleasant 18 mile drive east of Savannah (map). From there, visitors can overlook Georgia’s Atlantic coast and the mouth of the Savannah River. The beautifully restored facilities mirror their original condition. Admission requires a modest fee. This allows visitors to climb all…
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Sand Island and Eagle Island
Apostle Islands National Lakeshore, Bayfield County, Wisconsin (August 2007) We cruised past Sand Island and spied its famous lighthouse in the distance, a tan notch along a forested cliff. The Sand Island Lighthouse first shined in 1881 as a companion to the nearby Raspberry Island light. Ships heading east to Ashland couldn’t see Raspberry Island…
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Raspberry Island
Apostle Islands National Lakeshore; Bayfield County, Wisconsin (August 2007) Mariners navigated through the Apostle Islands with the Raspberry Island Light as their companion since its 1863 activation. This “Showplace of the Apostles” took its present form in 1906 when the U.S. Lighthouse Service expanded the keeper’s quarters to accommodate additional workers to operate a new…
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Ocracoke Light Station
Ocracoke Island, North Carolina (March 2012) The primary reason we went through the trouble of riding the ferry to Ocracoke Island from Hatteras was to see the old lighthouse (map). Construction of this version occurred in 1823 although lighthouses watched over Ocracoke Inlet since 1795. The need had long been established. English explorers first wrecked…
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Sullivan’s Island Lighthouse
Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina (September 2008) The lighthouse on Sullivan’s Island (map) is an oddity. It doesn’t look like any other lighthouse that I’ve ever seen before or since. Sure it’s a towering structure and it throws light far out to sea, but its appearance is downright strange. Most noticeably the tower takes a triangular…
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Morris Island Lighthouse
Charleston, South Carolina (September 2008) The Morris Island lighthouse (map) has the classic appearance of what a lighthouse “should” look like. I took this long-range photograph taken from several miles away at Fort Sumter. It doesn’t do it much justice, but you can just make out the alternating black and white horizontal bands painted onto…
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Key West Lighthouse
Key West, Florida (April 2009) A light rose early in the history of Key West — 1826 — just seven years after the territory of Florida became part of the United States. The original brick structure of the lighthouse towered sixty-five feet above the southernmost point of the island, illuminating seaward through the power of…
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More South Florida Lighthouses
Broward and Monroe Counties, Florida (April 2009) The lighthouse at Hillsboro Inlet came to the coast rather recently, having been first lit in 1907 (map). This section of coastline sits at the northernmost reach of the Florida Reef and mariners needed sufficient warning when approaching the underwater coral to avoid damaging their vessels. This became…
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Remote Lighthouses of the Dry Tortugas
Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida (April 2009) The end of the Florida Keys is not Key West. Not hardly. Islands of coral, sand and mangrove trail out further into the Gulf of Mexico. First come the Marquesas Keys. Further out still, some 70 miles from the civilized shores of Key West come the Dry Tortugas.…
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Franklin Island Light
Muscongus Bay, Maine (August 2009) The Franklin Island light (map) is the first lighthouse featured in this video I took while traveling Muscongus Bay in southeastern Maine. There has been a lighthouse on this rock since 1807 — one of the earliest places along the Maine coastline to be lighted — although this current structure…