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Lighthouses were our traffic lights of the sea between New Orleans and Mobile. The few that are left are historical relics.
Charles Sullivan
TIM ISBELL/SUN HERALD PHOTOGRAPHER
The 1848 Biioxl Lighthouse, now located in the center of U.S. 90, has become the most photographed Coast landmark.
Let the lights shine
U.S. to mark
COAST CHRONICLES
Fire, storms,
FILE PHOTO
found Island lighthouse to be restored.
of lighthouses
With their own candles selling the night ablaze, lighthouses are celebrating their 200th American
birthday.
The party for these marine lights has become an expensive one, with the U.S. Congress footing a $1 million bill this year for fresh paint, lenses and structural repairs. But that is a mere drop in the tower bucket, and local governments and history buffs are trying to raise more money to save the aging, weather-beaten structures in their domain.
To lose a lighthouse, after all, is to lose an irreplaceable chapter of maritime history. For the Mississippi Coast, that means fewer memories of romantic paddle-wheelers, sailing schooners and valiant light keepers.
"Lighthouses were our traffic, lights of the sea between New Orleans and Mobile,” explains Coast historian Charles Sullivan. “The few that arc left are historical relics.
“The towers allowed steamboats filled wilh visitors to come nighl and day, thus bringing the Coast’s first economic boom — tourism.”
But storms, wars, fires and municipal development have claimed a dozen Mississippi Sound lighthouses. Today, only two major towers remain.
The Ml-year-old Biloxi Lighthouse now stands in the center of busy four-lane U.S. 90 and is maintained by the city as a tourist attraction and night beacon. The light of the 1853 Round Island tower was long ago extinguished. Water dangerously laps at its foundation as its new owner, Pascagoula, rushes to save it.
Both towers have received $5,000 grants from Congress' Bicentennial Lighthouse Fund, a $3-million, three-year effort to in-
By Kat Rcrgcron
JOE SCHOITFS COLLECTION
The second Cat Island lighthouse became surplus in 1948 and later burned.
spire the nation to restore its historic towers and stations. Some are tall and slender, -others more like squat houses with a light shining from the roof.
The Massachusetts-based Lighthouse Preservation Society (LPS) has spearhead-
Please see LIGHTS, li-2
toll on Coast lighthouses
A
■ Too many Mississippi Coast lighthouses have' become “a beam from memory’s lamp,” as poet Ogden Nash once suggested.
The rigors of lime have felled some of the Coast’s grandest marine lights. But they live on in memory and photographs, and in stories of valiant light keepers who became slaves to their beacon fires.
Only two major towers remain, and they are no longer essential to Mississippi Sound navigation. But the Biloxi and Round Island lights remain rare examples of Uncle Sam’s early concern for Coast defense and commerce.
A handful of privately built towers have likewise suffered, though one at the Broadwater Marina shines brightly. Gone is the pretty Baldwin Wood tower on East Beach Biloxi, once used to shine on Wood’s famed racing yacht, Nydia. lie bought the estate from the Howard family, noted Biloxi philanthropists, and put a light in (he ornamental 1875 tower later destroyed by Hurricane Camille.
A little-known lighthouse was built at Clermont Harbor in Hancock County by Hugh Turner Carr. A 195G Daily Herald “Know Your Coast” column claimed the tower was used during World War II by the “Third Fighter Command, ” and then adapted by Carr for his antique business.
Towers whose bills were footed by the federal government weren’t always in such conspicuous places. Take, for example, the short-lived St. Joseph’s island Light once south of Bay St. Louis. The
Please see TOLL, E-2