Fort Jefferson with Loggerhead Key in background Photograph courtesy State Archives of Florida

To curtail the number of ships being lost, Congress appropriated $35,000 on August 18, 1856 for the establishment of a second, more powerful lighthouse in the Dry Tortugas. The new 150-foot tower would possess a first-order Fresnel lens and stand on Loggerhead Key, three miles west of Garden Key and at the western extreme of the islands. Captain Daniel P. Woodbury, who at the time was overseeing the construction of Garden Key’s Fort Jefferson, was also put in charge of building the Dry Tortugas Lighthouse. Following Woodbury’s plans, the conical brick tower would enclose a spiral staircase consisting of 203 granite blocks that lead upwards to the watch room, on top of which rested the lantern room. Twelve feet below the watch room, the tower’s brickwork started to flare out to support an exterior walkway encircling the watch room. The Fresnel lens, supplied by L. Sautter & Company of Paris, France, produced a steady white light and was first illuminated on July 1, 1858.

The housing for the keepers consisted of a two-story duplex for the principal and an assistant keeper, and a second two-story structure, whose top floor served as living quarters for a second assistant keeper and whose ground floor was used as a communal kitchen. Other structures at the station included a two-story, freestanding brick oil house, and two brick cisterns, which collected the rainwater from the roofs of the two dwellings.

The first head keeper was Benjamin H. Kerr, who was transferred to the Loggerhead Key Lighthouse after nine years of service at the Garden Key Lighthouse. In a report filed in 1860, G. Phillips, who was stationed at Fort Jefferson, recounted the ‘incident’ that occurred at Loggerhead Key. The two assistants at the lighthouse were not enamored with Kerr, and, at that time, neither were Kerr’s wife and eldest daughter, for the four banded together and made an attempt on the keeper’s life. Kerr managed to defend himself with a carving knife, and then fled to Garden Key in a small boat, accompanied by a sympathetic daughter. The two exiles soon left for Key West, but apparently the parties were later reconciled as Kerr is listed as the head keeper at Loggerhead Key until 1861.

Dry Tortugas Lighthouse on Loggerhead Key Photograph courtesy State Archives of Florida

During the Civil War years, roughly two thousand people were living at Fort Jefferson on Garden Key, including several officers and their families. Loggerhead Key, as its name implies, was a nesting place for turtles, and men at the fort frequently visited the island to “turn turtle”. The unsuspecting turtles would swim up on the beach at night to lay their eggs, only to find themselves rudely inverted and then later hauled off to Garden Key, where they became a valuable source of food. The turtles, weighing from two to five hundred pounds, were also a common staple for the keepers and their families. The turtle hunts provided the families living at the fort a chance to socialize with those at the Loggerhead Lighthouse. The wife of an officer at the fort left the following record of one such occasion: “We took three boats, with music for dancing and supper, making a grand frolic of the occasion. After supper, which everyone enjoyed in the lighthouse living room, the ample kitchen was converted into a ballroom, and dancing indulged in until it was time for the turtles to come up.”

The hurricane of 1873 inflicted heavy damage on the towers at Loggerhead Key and Garden Key. The Garden Key Lighthouse was soon replaced with a short iron tower atop Fort Jefferson, and before sufficient funds were obtained for a tall cast-iron tower on Loggerhead Key the following repairs, as reported by the Lighthouse Board, were made on the existing structure.

The old part [of the tower], for a distance of eight or nine feet below the lantern, including the watch-room walls, was entirely rebuilt, and the anchors of the lantern extended downward through the entire distance without in any way interfering with the regular exhibition of the light. When it is remembered that the tower is about 150 feet high, the difficulty in making there repairs will be better appreciated. They were accomplished by cutting out the old masonry in narrow vertical sections, replacing each section entire before removing the next.

A red sector was placed in the lens in 1893 to alert mariners of a reef just offshore from the lighthouse. Then, in 1909, the Lighthouse Board purchased a second-order bivalve lens for the tower. The large, eye-like lens floated on a pool of mercury, enabling the lens to be easily rotated to produce a flashing white characteristic. In 1986, the mercury float was damaged and the lens came to a stop. After disposing of the toxic mercury, the Coast Guard replaced the lens with a DCB-24, and then in 1995 with a VRB-25. The classic bivalve lens is on display at the National Aids to Navigation School in Yorktown, Virginia.

The two-story keepers’ dwelling burned down in 1945, however, a new one-story, yellow-brick bungalow topped with a hipped roof had been built for the head keeper in 1922, so housing on the island remained sufficient. The lighthouse was automated in 1987. Today, volunteers stay in the original building that served as a kitchen and dwelling and keep an observant eye on the property. The 1922 bungalow is used by the Coast Guard to house crews during routine maintenance visits to the lighthouse.

In 1992, Loggerhead Key was included in Dry Tortugas National Park. The turtles, which continue to return to the island to lay their eggs, can now do so without fear of being turned, harassed, or eaten.

References

1. Lighthouses of the Florida Keys, Love Dean, 1998.