The St Augustine Lighthouse and Maritime Museum is a beautiful lighthouse and has a great museum complex and grounds surrounding it. It offers night visits with ghost stories.
The first lighthouse in St. Augustine was a wooden watchtower built by Spanish in the late 1500s. The flame was too weak to properly signal ships. The watchtower burned down in 1586 from an attack from Sir Francis Drake. Later a coquina lighthouse was built in 1683 and it lasted until 1880 until it washed away from beach erosion.
The Current Lighthouse was started in 1871 and completed in 1874, before the loss of the other lighthouse. The new lighthouse had a first order Fresnel lens on it.
During World War II, Coast Guard men and women trained in St. Augustine used the lighthouse to look for enemy ships and submarines which frequented the coastline.
The Keeper’s House, which is quite nice, sits next to the lighthouse was built in 1876 to provide living quarters for the families of those who kept watch.
Heritage Boatworks section built by the Museum’s volunteer boatwrights use a combination of old and new techniques. They raffle one of these great boats every year.
There are displays on the science of conservation, life in the area and the importance of shipping. A beautiful place to spend a couple hours
