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Photo Diary: Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse, New Smyrna Beach, FL [1]

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Date: 2023-03-02

The Ponce de Leon Lighthouse is the tallest in Florida and the second-tallest in the US.

For those who don't know, I live in a converted campervan and travel around the country, posting photo diaries of places that I visit. I am currently wintering in Florida.

In 1766, after the British gained control of Florida, a new colony was established by Royal Charter in what is now New Smyrna Beach, just south of the Spanish settlement at St Augustine. Some 1500 immigrants from Italy, Minorca, Greece and England came here.

After decades of hardship, the town began to flourish, and by the 1880s it was an important shipping port for indigo, cotton, and sugar. And that meant it needed a lighthouse. The British had already been using signal fires at night to guide incoming ships, but this was inadequate, and as the number of ships increased the danger from the shallow sand bars grew larger. A 40-foot tower was built in 1834, but it was undercut by beach erosion and damaged by Native raids during the Seminole Wars, and it collapsed two years later. By 1840, there was no lighthouse at all between Cape Canaveral and St Augustine, and a group of local ship-owners wrote a letter to the US Congress complaining, “We are suffering in considerable privations, and difficulties, in the trade to this quarter in consequence of there being no Light House at Mosquito Inlet.”

In March 1883, with funding finally coming from Congress, the local government purchased ten acres of land at the mouth of what was then known as Mosquito Inlet, and plans were made for a new lighthouse which would be constructed from brick.

The tower would be used to test out a new method of construction. Instead of using fixed wooden scaffolding to surround the project, individual bricks would be left out at ten-foot intervals to allow a wooden platform to be fitted into place, which could then be moved one section at a time. It was faster and cheaper than previous methods and was quickly adopted as the standard for future brick towers. To save weight and cost, the tower was also built with an inner wall and an outer, with the space in between reinforced by a number of spoke-like radial walls to form a honeycomb structure.

Work on the 176-foot tower (the tallest in Florida and second-tallest in the US) began in 1884, and the kerosene-fueled light signal, with a fixed glass Fresnel lens made in Paris, began operating in November 1887. It was visible 20 miles out to see, and warned ships of the shallow sand bars along the shore.

In 1897, during the run-up to the Spanish-American War, author Stephen Crane, who was at the time writing for the New York Post, was aboard the privately-owned steam tugboat Commodore, which was illegally smuggling guns to the anti-Spanish rebels in Cuba. As the Commodore passed by Mosquito Inlet in the dark, she was swamped in bad weather and sunk, leaving Crane and three other survivors floating in a lifeboat about 13 miles from shore. Over the next 27 hours they made their way towards the lighthouse, which was the only thing visible on the shore, and were rescued. Crane wrote a breath-taking account of the incident for the Post, and later expanded this into the fictionalized short story “The Open Boat”.

A number of improvements were made to the lighthouse over time. In 1909 the kerosene lamp was replaced by a brighter incandescent oil vapor bulb. In 1923 a generator was installed to bring electricity to the keeper's house, and ten years later a flashing electric lamp was installed in the lighthouse. The name was changed at this time to “Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse” to make the area more attractive to visiting tourists from up north.

The US Coast Guard took control of the lighthouse in 1939, and during the Second World War it was used as an observation post and anti-submarine watchtower. The keeper's house was converted into a barracks.

By 1953 the lighthouse was completely automated, and the keeper's house was abandoned. In 1970 the Coast Guard put up a new lighthouse on the other side of the inlet, and the 1887 tower was abandoned. It was donated to the city of New Smyrna in 1972 and was turned over to the nonprofit Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse Preservation Association, to be refurbished and run as a museum, opening for tours in 1982. As one of the few remaining intact 19th century lighthouses, the site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and in 1998 became a National Historic Landmark. One of the original Fresnel lenses was installed back into the lantern room at the top of the tower, and the site still operates as a privately-owned navigational aid.

Today, in addition to the lighthouse tower, visitors can see the keeper's house, the two assistant keeper cottages, the oil house, the pumphouse, and three woodsheds. There is a display of artifacts in the museum.

Some photos from a visit.

Visitors Center

The lighthouse tower

Most of the original buildings still stand

The Keeper’s House

Inside the Keeper’s House

One of the Secondary Keeper Houses

Inside

Oil Storage House

Fuel tanks

A display of lighthouse lanterns

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/2/2150914/-Photo-Diary-Ponce-de-Leon-Inlet-Lighthouse-New-Smyrna-Beach-FL

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