Technical

Without a lighthouse, the Inlet remained treacherous. Ships were lost and with each wreck a clamor went up for the construction of a lighthouse at the Inlet to make navigation in the area safer. By 1870, engineers of the United States Light-House Service had visited and reconnoitered Mosquito Inlet (today known as Ponce De Leon Inlet).

One of the most important aspects of America’s far flung light stations was the question of supplying water, not only for domestic use but, in some cases, for the boilers that supplied steam for sound (fog) signals.

In the days before electricity and electric motors came to the shores, it was a weight-driven gearbox that provided the motive power to turn even immensely heavy Fresnel lenses to produce those flashes of light.