Florida Keys Reef Lights

Did you see today's post from Florida Keys History Center - Monroe County Public Library? I love information about the day to day workings of the reef lights!

July 22, 1926 – The new issue of the Lighthouse Service Bulletin explained how drinking water was obtained for the light stations along the Florida Reef: Rainwater that fell on the painted lighthouse structures was caught and carried by gutters and pipes to 8,000-gallon storage tanks, a method that had been practiced for nearly 75 years.

Also on this date:

1890 – Thomas Ash, who was in charge of construction of the new Monroe County Courthouse, was elected city surveyor by the Key West City Commission.

1923 – Thirty men were employed in construction of the golf course on Stock Island, and engineers were contemplating hiring more to hasten the completion of the project.

1925 – Governor John W. Martin named Miss Ileen Williams as the county’s first Juvenile Judge.

1936 – Construction began on a new parsonage for Key West’s Fleming Street Methodist Church. Much of the lumber for the eight-room, bungalow-style building at 619 William Street had been salvaged from the previous parsonage and a building on Peacon Lane.

1981 – The Navy began dismantling the large radio towers that had stood on the Naval Station since the early part of the century.

1982 – Two men doused a passenger and the cabin of a Key West-bound Air Florida plane in Miami with gasoline, brandished cigarette lighters, and hijacked the plane to Cuba.

1985 – Jeanette T. Cooper of Key West was installed as the first female president of the Southeastern Fisheries Association.

1990 – The movie “CrissCross” starring Goldie Hawn was being filmed in Key West.

1997 – Ground was broken for the Key West Historic Memorial Sculpture Garden at Mallory Square.

Information compiled by Dr. Corey Malcom, Lead Historian, Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.

Image: American Shoals Lighthouse south of Sugarloaf Key, ca. 1910. From the Haffenreffer Collection. Monroe County Public Library, Florida Keys History Center.

Today marks the 173rd anniversary of the lighting of the present Sand Key Lighthouse. A masonry tower was washed away, with a loss of many lives, in a hurricane on October 10, 1846. The lightship LV Honey was on station from 1846 until 1853. The construction of the present light tower was overseen first by J.W.P, Lewis, one of the most noted American designers of lighthouses, and then Lt. George Meade. First lit on July 20, 1853, the present Sand Key Light was the second of the offshore iron pile towers marking the Florida reef line.