Turns out we had been here before, but I was missing stamps, and pins, and patches, and got them all, plus a boat for Ponce Inlet.
It was a coolish windy day- Long hard climb but we did it!
Author Stephen Crane published his
Civil War masterpiece The Red Badge of Courage in 1895, three decades
after the conclusion of this divisive conflict. In 1896, an editor provided
Crane an opportunity to experience battle firsthand by covering the budding
rebellion in Cuba. While en route to the island aboard the 123-foot S. S.
Commodore, which was carrying a load of firearms, Crane was shipwrecked off
the Floridian Coast near Daytona Beach during a gale. Abandoning the sinking
vessel, Crane, the captain, and two sailors, set out in a small lifeboat.
Providently, the lighthouse at Mosquito Inlet marked the distant coast for the
hapless quartet, but the group still had to endure twenty-seven hours of
frantic rowing and frequent bailing before they were able to bring their craft
safely to shore. Crane’s story on the Cuban conflict would have to wait, but
the harrowing hours spent in the lifeboat provided an alternate firsthand
experience that would develop into his most successful short story “The Open
Boat.”
Stephen Crane and his companions
were certainly not the first to be served by Mosquito Inlet Lighthouse, and the
tower whose beacon they saw was not the first to stand over the area. Mosquito
Inlet served as the exit point for two rivers: the Halifax River to the north
and the Hillsborough River, later named the Indian River, to the south, and
several plantations in the area relied on the inlet to carry their cotton,
rice, and oranges to distant ports. In 1830, William DePeyster authored a
petition to Congress signed by thirty-eight other plantation and ship owners
from Mosquito County relating that they “were suffering in considerable
privations, and difficulties, in the trade to this quarter in consequence of
there being no Light House at Mosquito Inlet.” Congress responded with $11,000
in June 1834 for a lighthouse on the southern side of the inlet, and on October
31 of that year Winslow Lewis was awarded the contract for its construction. A
forty-five-foot, conical, brick
tower and a dwelling were hastily completed
by the end of February 1835 at a cost of $7,494. The first keeper assigned to
the station was William H. Williams who received an annual stipend of $450.
Keeper Williams didn’t have much
work to do, for the government had failed to provide oil for the eleven lamps
in his lantern room. During a violent storm in October 1835, the dwelling was
washed into the inlet and the foundation of the tower was undercut. Soon
thereafter, the station also suffered the effects of the Second Seminole Indian
War when a raiding party visited New Smyrna and ravaged the lighthouse. It is
reported that Chief Coacoochee procured one of the reflectors from the lantern
and used it in his headdress during the Battle of Dunn Lawton fought near the
lighthouse. This is unlikely, as the reflectors were swept out to sea in the
October storm, but the Seminole leader might have found a reflector that had
washed up on a nearby shore. Repair work on the crippled tower was not possible
during this time due to the troubled relations with the Native Americans, and
the lighthouse eventually collapsed in April 1836. Congress appropriated $7,000
on March 3, 1837 to rebuild the lighthouse on a new site, but this sum reverted
to the treasury in 1839.
The Florida legislature sent a
resolution to Congress on February 8, 1847 requesting a new lighthouse for
Mosquito Inlet. This request, however, was not acted upon, and the matter would
not be revisited until after the Civil War. The Lighthouse Board’s annual
report of 1870 stated that the level of commerce passing through Mosquito Inlet
did not by itself justify a major light, but since the inlet was positioned
roughly at the center of the 100-mile stretch of unlit coastline between the
lights at St. Augustine and Cape Canaveral, a lighthouse at the inlet that
would serve as both a coastal and a harbor light was merited. The board’s
request that year for $60,000 to commence the construction of the lighthouse
went unfunded.
The Lighthouse Board repeated its
request for a lighthouse at Mosquito Inlet each of the next four years to no
avail. In 1882, the request was renewed, but now the estimated construction
cost had risen to $200,000. Congress finally relented, but it did not supply
the funding in one lump sum. Rather, payments were painfully strung out over
the next five years, hampering work on the light station.
A site for the lighthouse was
selected on the north side of the inlet to prevent the southward-moving inlet
from claiming a second tower. General Orville E. Babcock, chief engineer of the
fifth and sixth lighthouse districts, was to oversee construction of the
lighthouse but tragically, on June 2, 1884, the vessel transporting Babcock to
shore overturned in the breakers at the bar, and he drowned in the inlet along
with two other men.
Jared Smith assumed responsibility
in Babcock’s stead, and work on the project soon commenced. Over a million
bricks would be used to construct the lighthouse, which slowly grew to its
preordained height of 175 feet, six-and-a-half inches from the ground to the tip
of the lightning rod. The only taller brick lighthouse in the country is Cape
Hatteras. A brick foundation, extending twelve feet below ground, supports the
massive tower which consists of an inner and outer wall connected by spoke-like
interstitial walls. The outer wall tapers as it rises, while the inner wall
maintains a constant twelve-foot diameter, leaving room for the 194-step, circular
stairway.
Originally, a multi-family residence
was considered for the station, but instead, separate dwellings were built for
the head keeper and the two assistants to afford them more privacy. The station is beautifully laid out in the shape of a cross, with the head
keeper’s dwelling built at the
end of a brick walkway directly east of the lighthouse, with the first and second assistant keeper dwellings are symmetrically positioned
north and south of the walkway. The largest dwelling is a square structure with
a chimney rising from the center of a double-hipped roof, and, of course, it
belonged to the principal keeper. The identical assistant keeper’s dwellings
are rectangular with chimneys at each end of the pitched roofs. A brick
woodshed with attached privy was built
behind each of the dwellings, and a large storage
building was provided for the station's oil.
When the tower was completed, a
first-order Fresnel lens, constructed in 1867 by the Parisian firm of Barbier
and Fenestre, was assembled in the lantern room. The lens was somewhat unique
in that the landward side of the lens was composed of three concave reflecting
panels. The light was exhibited for the first time on November 1, 1887, by head
keeper William Rowlinski, who had most recently served as first assistant
keeper at Cape Romain Lighthouse in South Carolina.
Rowlinski served at Mosquito Inlet
Lighthouse for just over six years, and even with the separation provided by
the detached residences, he still did not get along with some of his assistant
keepers. The disputes escalated to the point that the Lighthouse Board swapped
Rowlinski with the head keeper at Georgetown, South Carolina. Thomas Patrick
O'Hagan thus became the second head keeper at Mosquito Inlet in 1893, arriving
at the station with his wife and four kids. When he was transferred to Amelia
Island twelve years later, his posterity numbered eleven.
Though accurate, the name Mosquito
Inlet proved a deterrent to increased settlement in the area. To correct this
problem, the name was officially changed to Ponce de Leon Inlet in honor of the
famed explorer, and the lighthouse became the Ponce
de Leon Inlet Lighthouse.
In 1896, lightning struck the
lighthouse, destroying the electric call apparatus used for summoning the
relief keeper. Two years later, the main gallery outside the lantern room was
rigged with a spar and halyards, and the keepers were supplied with signal
books, a set of international code flags, and a pair of marine glasses so they
could communicated with offshore vessels.
John Lindquist, who served as head
keeper from 1905 to 1924, received the lighthouse efficiency pennant for three
consecutive years for having the model station in the district. Keeper
Lindquist was also recognized for providing assistance to the crews of disabled
or wrecked vessels near the station on at least three occasions.
Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse was
electrified in 1933, and the first-order Fresnel lens was replaced by a
third-order lens relocated from the discontinued Sapelo Lighthouse in Georgia. This
new lens rotated producing six flashes in a fifteen second period followed by a
fifteen-second eclipse. The Coast Guard assumed responsibility for Ponce de
Leon Inlet Lighthouse in 1939 and kept a crew at the station until the
lighthouse was fully automated in 1953.
After automation, the station
dwellings sat unoccupied until the Town of Ponce Inlet was incorporated in 1963
and began using one of the assistant keeper’s dwellings as a town hall. The
Coast Guard abandoned the lighthouse in 1970 in favor a steel skeletal light
tower located at their station on the south side of the inlet. At the urging of
concerned residents, the Town took over the deed to the property, and the
citizens formed the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse Preservation Association to
manage the facility.
The third-order lens was removed
from the tower in 1971 and shipped to the Coast Guard Academy Museum in New
London, Connecticut, but after a museum was established at Ponce de Leon Inlet
Lighthouse, the lens was returned for display in 1973. When a newly constructed
high-rise condominium obscured the light at the Coast Guard station in 1982,
Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse was outfitted with a modern optic and
reactivated.
Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse is
one of the finest light stations in the United States and merits an extended
visit. The dwellings now house exhibits on the lighthouse keepers and families.
Even the modern redbrick
gift shop is historically significant as it
was constructed using the plans for the multi-family dwelling that was never
built. A lens
exhibit building was
constructed on-site in 1995 and now houses the revolving first-order
lens from Cape Canaveral Lighthouse. In
2003, the fixed first-order lens originally used in the Ponce de Leon
Lighthouse was also placed on display, after it was returned by Mystic Seaport.
Two smaller replica
lenses are also on display along with
other acquired lenses.
The station’s historical value
continues to grow thanks to the tireless efforts of the preservation
association. The third-order
Fresnel lens was placed back in the lantern room
in 2004, providing the public a rare chance to see an active, revolving,
Fresnel lens. The lighthouse’s connection to the past was further strengthened
when the wreck of the S.S. Commodore, which had carried Stephen Crane,
was located and artifacts retrieved from the wreckage were placed on display at
the station. (They were removed in 2007.) The lighthouse serves today as a
Private Aid to Navigation, maintained by the museum's staff.
Head Keepers: William H. Williams
(1835 – 1836), William R. Rowlinski (1887 – 1893), Thomas P. O’Hagan (1893 –
1905), John Lindquist (1905 – 1924), Charles Leslie Sisson (1924 – 1926), John
B. Butler (1926 – 1937), Edward Lockwood Meyer (1937 – 1943).
