Fort Point, SC 
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Along the northern South Carolina coast, the broad entrance to Winyah Bay funnels traffic toward the historic port of Georgetown. For a few years, mariners negotiating shoals, tidal currents, and fog sought a dependable guide at the bay’s inner reach—on a low promontory known as Fort Point. The site had earlier military associations, and its name echoed a larger truth of American coastal history: the best places to keep enemies out of a harbor were often the very places best suited to guide ships safely in.
That pattern is underscored by the fact that four U.S. lighthouses shared the name “Fort Point”—at harbor gateways in Maine (Bangor), South Carolina (Georgetown), California (San Francisco), and Texas (Galveston). Each stood where strategic defense and maritime navigation naturally converged.
On August 18, 1856, Congress appropriated $6,000 for “a lighthouse on Fort Point, near Georgetown, S.C.” South Carolina ceded a site—up to twenty acres—in Georgetown County for the purpose.
By 1857, the Annual Report of the Lighthouse Board noted that new lights at Cape Lookout and Hunting Island were underway, and that Fort Point’s light would be built during the coming winter. The work moved quickly. In 1858, the “light-house at Fort Point, Winyah Bay, South Carolina” was completed and lighted. William G. Uptegrove was appointed keeper at an annual salary of $350.
An 1860 Light List described the station as:
The Light List’s GPS coordinates place the lighthouse at the confluence of the Sampit River and Winyah Bay—roughly where Morgan Park stands today. Local tradition holds that the point was once the site of Fort Winyah, explaining the “Fort Point” name.
The outbreak of the Civil War abruptly ended the lighthouse’s brief service. The structure was extinguished and destroyed in 1861. Keeper William G. Uptegrove, like several federal officers in the region, refused to join the Confederacy and was taken prisoner.
In May 1863, Commodore William Shubrick reviewed Uptegrove’s claim for unpaid salary and reported favorably after a personal interview, noting that his assertions were credible and requesting departmental guidance on paying him to date. The Commissioner of Customs later confirmed that both Uptegrove and the local customs officer had been imprisoned for their loyalty to the Union. He recommended that Uptegrove receive one year’s salary from his last payment (December 30, 1860).
Tragically, Uptegrove did not live to see a resolution. In March 1864, his widow, Ann H. Uptegrove, petitioned for the compensation her husband had sought. Officials could not locate the original petition or Shubrick’s letter in departmental files, and there is no indication that her claim was ever settled.
In 1868, federal records concluded: “Fort Point, near Georgetown; South Carolina. This light was extinguished and building destroyed in 1861. Its re-establishment at this time is not deemed necessary.” The bay’s navigation needs would later be met by other aids, and Fort Point’s role faded into memory.
Though South Carolina’s Fort Point Lighthouse burned for only a few years, it belonged to a national pattern. From Bangor to San Francisco to Galveston, “Fort Point” lights rose at strategic chokepoints—where cannons once guarded channels and, later, lanterns and lenses guided commerce. At Georgetown’s harbor, that convergence of defense and navigation found brief expression in a modest, thirty-foot tower—now gone, but not forgotten.
William G. Uptegrove (1858 – 1861).