Lighthouse Details

Dual shell construction

MichaelStephenWills

Here is the second in a series of photographs centered on the early history of space flight on Cape Canaveral mostly taken during a tour organized by the Cape Canaveral Lighthouse Foundation. Google the foundation for details of future tours. Here we revisit the daymark and explore interesting particulars of the lighthouse structure.

Daymark

A favorite walk of ours is to make for the prominant church steeple closed to South 8th Avenue. The following photograph captures an aspect of the lighthouse, daymark, from 11.5 miles away. The previous post provided a view from 10.1 miles. The alternating black and white stripes ending in a black top is the daymark identifying the tower as Cape Canaveral.

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Lighthouse Daymark from 11.5 miles taken January 2019

Until the 1930’s the lighthouse was commissioned with a lighthouse keeper responsible, with the assistance of others. Then, it was turned over to the Federal Government, the Coast Guard who owned it until the year 2000 transfer to the 45th “Space Wing,” Patrick Air Force Base.

In And Around the Tower

Five floors of the tower are a museum, opened for the tours. In operation, the first floor of the tower is sealed against floods. A set of steps lead to a door on the second floor. For the tour we entered through a door to the first floor. For each floor a docent explained the exhibits and answered questions. Each was a volunteer and very knowledgable. Some retired from the Coast Guard/Air Force an knew intimate details from experience. We proceeded floor to floor on the interior iron staircase. We exited through the second floor to the exterior stairs.

Take note of the brick wall behind the volunteer docent (guide). It is the inner shell of the lighthouse.

View of the 151 foot tower from the first floor entrance. Visible are the iron panel welds. Each of the six interior floors has a porthole type window.

Looking up from the first floor entrance

Exterior Stairs and Windows

The welded iron exterior is very strong, built to withstand storms. A weak point is the foundation, built on Florida sands. When the lighthouse was moved to this location in the 19th century, the bricks from the interior shell were used as foundation for the reconstruction. From this location the lighthouse was silent wittness to the early experiments to fly ICBMs (Intercontinental Ballistic Missle) and manned space flight.

Styled rope rims around each porthole sytle window were formed in the panel mold, are a piece of the shell, not welded on.

View from the port hold window, the graveled entrance path, our parked tour bus.

ClickMe for the next post in this series, “Lighthouse and Rockets.”

ClickMe for the first post in this series, “Cape Canaveral Lighthouse.”

Copyright 2019 Michael Stephen Wills All Rights Reserved.

14 thoughts on “Lighthouse Details”

  2. When I lived in Florida for a particular job, I visited Kennedy Space Center. Wish Iā€™d researched that area more, would have really enjoyed seeing this. Thanks. Wonderful photos!

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      2. Year 2000 the Air Force took ownership. Around 2002 the Foundation had an agreement with the Air Force and there were tours of the lighthouse as part of the Air Force Space & Missile Museum tour. The museum is open to the public just before the entry gate.

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  3. What a great post, Michael! I love your photo of the docent especially; he looks like a real character. And how neat to consider also the many years of history this structure has witnessed. Hopefully it won’t be affected by the (latest) hurricane this weekend.

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