St. Marks Lighthouse Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard

In 1828, William P. Duval, who succeeded Andrew Jackson as Governor of the Florida Territory, encouraged Joseph M. White, a territorial delegate to Congress, to petition for the construction of a lighthouse at St. Marks. White contacted the chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce with the plea, and on May 23, 1828, an act appropriating $6,000 for the construction of the St. Marks Lighthouse was passed.

The contract for the lighthouse was awarded to Winslow Lewis, and under his direction Benjamin Beal and Jairus Thayer constructed a tower at a cost of $11,765. However, the Collector of Customs for St. Marks refused to accept the lighthouse as it was built with hollow walls, a practice that was not yet widely accepted. Calvin Knowlton, Lewis’ partner, supervised the construction of a solid, replacement tower, which was accepted by the finicky collector in January of 1830. Samuel Crosby became the first keeper of the St. Marks Lighthouse, assuming responsibility for the tower’s many whale-oil lamps.

Under the 1832 Treaty of Payne's Landing, Florida’s Seminole Indians were to relocate west of the Mississippi River by 1835. However, when 1835 arrived, the Indians refused to leave, and the Second Seminole Indian War, which would last for seven years, erupted. During the first two years of the war, the lighthouses at Mosquito Inlet and Cape Florida were attacked. Fearing for the safety of his family, Keeper Crosby requested that a detachment of soldiers be stationed near the St. Marks Lighthouse. His request was denied. Crosby then asked for an escape boat that he could use in case of an attack, but again his petition was not granted. Fortunately, no attack was made on the St. Marks Lighthouse during Crosby’s tenure, which ended in 1839.

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In 1837, the Tallahassee-St. Marks Railroad was completed. The 20-mile line, Florida’s first, was conceived and financed by plantation owners to aid in transporting their cotton crops to the port at St. Marks. The cars were initially pulled by mules, but in the 1850’s locomotives were purchased to aid the cotton trade. As the port of St. Marks was growing, the land protecting the lighthouse from the Gulf was shrinking. By 1842, erosion was threatening the tower, and a new lighthouse was erected farther inland. The third St. Marks Lighthouse, which still stands today, rests on a base of limestone rocks taken from Fort San Marcos de Apalache and originally rose to a height of 65 feet. The stout walls are four-feet-thick at the bottom, and taper to a thickness of 18 inches up top. The sturdy construction saved the lives of Keeper Mungerford and his family, when a hurricane struck in September of 1843. The hurricane and accompanying tidal wave destroyed the nearby town of Port Leon, and inflicted substantial damage on St. Marks farther upriver.

Following the hurricane, a rugged breakwater was built to protect the lighthouse. A second powerful hurricane struck in 1851, but again the tower withstood the blast remarkably well. The dwelling, however, was damaged and eventually replaced in 1854, at which time a new breakwater was also constructed.

Nature had taken its shot at the lighthouse, and man was next. Before the Civil War reached St. Marks, the customs collector had removed all valuable items from the lighthouse. The dwelling and tower were used by both sides during the conflict. Confederate forces initially used the sturdy dwelling as a barracks and a fortress, while the tower served as a lookout. The lighthouse was bombarded by Union ships on June 15, 1862. A year later Union sailors returned and burned the wooden steps in the tower, to prevent the Confederates from reaching the top to spy on their activities. When Union forces landed near the lighthouse in 1865 to march on Tallahassee, they discovered that the retreating Confederates had set off multiple charges in holes they had drilled in the tower’s foundation. One blast tore an eight-foot-tall hole in one side of the tower, while other blasts succeeded in only dislodging several outer layers of brick from the tower.

Aerial view of St. Marks Lighthouse Photograph courtesy State Archives of Florida

After the end of the conflict, the tower was repaired between September and December of 1866. The lighthouse received a new fourth-order Fresnel lens, which was first lit by Keeper David Kennedy on January 7, 1867. In 1883, the tower was extended an additional ten feet, raising its focal plane to roughly 80 feet.

Charles Fine served as keeper from 1892 to 1904, when he was succeeded by his wife, Sarah. One of the Fine’s daughters was born, and raised at the lighthouse and eventually married J.Y. Gresham, a keeper at the lighthouse. Gresham would serve more years at the lighthouse than any other keeper. The Gresham children were raised in relative isolation at the lighthouse, and a private schoolteacher lived with the family to provide a formal education. One teacher, E.W. Roberts from Mississippi, became enamored with one of the Gresham daughters and eventually married her when she turned twenty-three. Another of the daughters (Nellie) became interested in a fisherman (Jesse Bishop) from St. Marks, who frequented the waters near the lighthouse. Knowing her father would not approve of the relationship, the daughter met the fisherman in secret and eventually eloped with him. Their marriage ended sadly in divorce, just as keeper Gresham predicted it would.

During the Gresham's service, the area around the lighthouse was incorporated into the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge encompasses some 68,000 acres, which serve as wintering habitat for migratory birds. The Greshams continued to serve at the lighthouse after the Coast Guard assumed responsibility for the nation’s lighthouses in 1939. The station was automated by the Coast Guard in 1960.

In 2000, the Coast Guard spent $150,000 to repair and stabilize the lighthouse. In June 2006, Congress passed an act transferring the lighthouse from the Coast Guard to the Fish and Wildlife Service, however, the transfer cannot be completed until lead-contaminated soil around the lighthouse is removed. Once the transfer is complete, the public will likely have the opportunity to climb the tower, view the historic Fresnel lens, and enjoy a wonderful vista of the St. Marks Wildlife Refuge.

References

1. Lighthouses, Lightships, and the Gulf of Mexico, David Cipra, 1997.
2. Florida Lighthouses, Kevin McCarthy, 1993.