![]() ![]() ![]() Lighthouse and two-story keeper’s dwelling A wire screen was promptly placed around the lantern room to prevent similar incidents. During the first month the light was active, a flock of ducks flew into the lantern room, breaking three panes of glass and slightly damaging the lens. An additional appropriation of $25,000 on Maallowed the work to continue, and the lighthouse commenced operation on October 15, 1874. The walls had grown to a height of just a few feet when these funds were exhausted, forcing work to be suspended. Construction on the lighthouse began in late spring of 1872 using $60,000 provided by Congress on Maand $20,000 added in 1872. Pelz, chief draftsman of the Lighthouse Board who would later be one of two architects responsible for designing the Library of Congress. Plans for the new lighthouse were drawn up by Paul J. The Lighthouse Board determined that a new lighthouse was needed, and a five-acre tract, located a half-mile inland, was acquired after old Spanish land grants and claims of settlers were straightened out. ![]() On July 1, 1870, the distance from the keeper’s dwelling to the high-water mark was seventy feet, but by November the distance had shrunk to just forty feet. Joseph Pacetti, a Confederate soldier, was wounded while removing the lens from the lighthouse so that the Union forces could not take advantage of it.Īfter a new lens and lantern were furnished, the tower was reactivated on June 1, 1867, but by that time, it was clearly evident that erosion was endangering the lighthouse. Joseph’s wife, Maria Mestre de los Dolores Andreu, took over as keeper and served until the light was extinguished shortly after the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1859, Joseph Andreu, a cousin of Juan Andreu and the fourth head keeper of the light, fell sixty feet to his death when the lashing of the scaffolding gave way while he was whitewashing the tower. The lighthouse was outfitted with a fourth-order, revolving Fresnel lens in 1854, and by this time the height of the tower had been increased to over fifty feet. Juan Andreu, a Minorcan, was paid $350 a year to care for the lighthouse and tend the ten oil lamps, set in silver, bowl-shaped reflectors. With a height of roughly thirty feet, the modified tower was placed in service in 1824. Augustine, proposed that the old Spanish tower be converted into a lighthouse, and Congress appropriated $5,000 on Mafor performing the work. John Rodman, the customs collector at St. Government worked quickly to establish a light to mark the inlet. Augustine was the leading port in the newly acquired Territory of Florida, the U.S. However, under the 1783 Treaty of Paris, control of Florida was returned to the Spanish, who controlled Florida until they relinquished it to the United States in 1821.Īs St. Spain ceded control of Florida to the English in 1763 to regain control of Cuba. Later, a more permanent tower was built using blocks of coquina that was formed as large deposits of shells were cemented together over time by calcium carbonate. Early on, the Spanish constructed a wooden lookout tower. On the northern end of Anastasia Island, several towers have been built through the years overlooking the inlet that leads to St. Augustine, the Matanzas River empties into the Atlantic, flowing past barrier islands named Anastasia and Conch. Augustine, and soon the fledgling colony of St. Menendez arrived off the Florida coast on August 28, 1565, the Feast Day of St. Don Juan Ponce de Leon discovered La Florida, the “Land of Flowers,” in 1513 for Spain, and roughly fifty years later, Spain made a serious attempt at colonizing Florida by dispatching Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles to the area. ![]() Augustine, the oldest permanent European settlement on the North American continent, is affectionately called the Old City. ![]()
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