Proctorsville, LA 
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Proctorsville owed its existence to one of the most ambitious transportation schemes of the antebellum South. During the railroad boom of the 1830s and 1840s, investors sought to link inland cities directly to deepwater ports, bypassing the slow and circuitous river routes that dominated Gulf commerce. One such venture was the Mexican and Gulf Railroad, which extended southward from New Orleans to Proctor’s Plantation, a remote outpost on the southern shore of Lake Borgne.
By about 1840, Proctorsville had become the southern terminus of the line. Railroad promoters announced sweeping plans to extend the rails eastward to Malheureux Point near Cat Island, where deep-draft ocean vessels would dock directly at a rail wharf. Cargo, they claimed, would move the eighteen miles between New Orleans and the Gulf at an astonishing twelve miles per hour, creating what boosters touted as the first deepwater railroad port on the Gulf of Mexico. The projected port never materialized, but for a brief moment Proctorsville stood at the center of these expansive commercial fantasies.
As rail operations began, the railroad company pressed for a navigational light to mark the terminus and guide vessels approaching Lake Borgne. Congress responded favorably. On August 14, 1848, it authorized an appropriation of $500 “for a bug-light at Proctorsville, on Lake Borgne,” placing the project under the supervision of the Fifth Auditor of the Treasury, Stephen Pleasonton.
Pleasonton, who oversaw the Lighthouse Establishment during this period, reacted with open confusion. Writing to Denis Prieur, Superintendent of Lights at New Orleans, he admitted, “What is meant by a Bug Light. I do not exactly comprehend.” He quickly recognized the practical problem: five hundred dollars was insufficient to erect any conventional lighthouse, especially one with keeper’s quarters. At best, the sum might finance a very small light—provided a keeper could be hired for twelve to fifteen dollars a month and live in his own house.
Pleasonton advised suspending the project if these conditions could not be met, and in 1849 he reported to Congress that “the appropriation being insufficient, nothing has been done in the case.” The funds risked reverting to the surplus unless action was taken.
In 1850, Pleasonton renewed his efforts, this time writing to Samuel Peters, Prieur’s successor. He enclosed a drawing of a simple beacon: a small lantern that ran up and down between two upright posts by means of weights. The design was reminiscent of beacon lights used elsewhere along the Gulf Coast and on older lightships—a rudimentary apparatus intended more as a point of reference than a true lighthouse.
At last, progress followed. On September 15, 1850, Cary Watkins was appointed keeper of the Proctorsville Beacon at an annual salary of $180. The long-delayed “bug light” had finally been established, though it remained a fragile and underpowered aid to navigation.
By the early 1850s, dissatisfaction with such makeshift lights was widespread. In November 1853, Captain D. Leadbetter of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, serving as lighthouse inspector for the Eighth District, bluntly described the existing lights along the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain and at Proctorsville as “wholly worthless,” maintained only in the hope that they might serve until better structures could be built. He proposed $3,000 for a new beacon light at Proctorsville.
Before those plans could advance, disaster struck. On the night of November 23–24, 1853, the Proctorsville beacon was destroyed by fire. Leadbetter reported that the structure “was of no value, except as being available till another could be erected.” In the interim, a temporary solution was adopted: a glass lantern suspended from a pole approximately thirty-six feet above the water.
Congress formally authorized funds for a replacement on November 24, 1853, and again on August 3, 1854, appropriating $3,000 for a new beacon light. Progress, however, was slow. By the mid-1850s, work at Proctorsville was repeatedly delayed due to unresolved land titles, a common obstacle for lighthouse construction in Louisiana’s marshlands. Not until 1858 did the Lighthouse Board report that “the small beacon light at Proctorsville has been erected on land belonging to the United States, and is lighted.”
The structure completed in 1858 represented the high point of Proctorsville’s maritime importance. On June 10 of that year, the Lighthouse Board issued a formal Notice to Mariners announcing a new lighthouse at Proctorsville. The building was a square wooden dwelling, painted white, surmounted by a black lantern. Its illuminating apparatus was a sixth-order Fresnel catadioptric lens, displaying a fixed white light visible for eight nautical miles.
The focal plane stood thirty-three feet above the ground and thirty-nine feet above mean sea level. The light was first exhibited at sunset on August 2, 1858, and the older pier-head light was discontinued. For the first time, Proctorsville possessed a legitimate lighthouse rather than a token beacon.
The triumph was short-lived. On August 11-12, 1860, a powerful hurricane swept across the northern Gulf Coast and entirely destroyed Proctorsville Lighthouse. Keeper Charles Combret reportedly lost his life “in endeavoring to save the premises & property.”
The storm destroyed Bayou St. John Lighthouse as well and severely damaged numerous other lights from Mississippi to Alabama. In the aftermath, the Lighthouse Board sought authority to rebuild Proctorsville using general repair funds, but the Secretary of the Treasury ruled that “where a light house is destroyed by the Act of God, the Board has no power to renew the light.”
Although wartime reports in 1862 optimistically listed Proctorsville among lights slated for restoration, the station was never re-established. By 1868, it was officially described as having been “destroyed in the hurricane of 1860 and not re-established,” and its importance was deemed marginal.
Congress nevertheless authorized additional funds. In 1869, $5,500 was appropriated for repairs and renovations at the Proctorsville beacon and Pass à l’Outre station, followed in 1871 by $5,000 to raise and repair the Proctorsville light. Engineers recommended an elevated structure on piles, similar to the lighthouse at Head of Passes, raised eight feet above ground to withstand storm surge.
By this time, however, Proctorsville’s economic rationale had largely evaporated. The Mexican and Gulf Railroad had been abandoned, and the site was described as “formerly the terminus” of the line. Attention briefly shifted to Tower Dupre, near the entrance of the Mississippi and Mexican Gulf Canal, where a light might better serve light-draft vessels seeking refuge from Lake Borgne.
In 1873, the Lighthouse Board concluded that the small and declining use of the canal “would not warrant the erection of a lighthouse,” either at Proctorsville or Tower Dupre. The remaining balance of the Proctorsville appropriation reverted to the Treasury, and the project was formally abandoned.
Keepers: Cary Watkins (1850 – at least 1857), W. Alex Gordon (1858), Charles Combret (1858 – 1860).
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