HISTORY & HERITAGE
Cape San Blas Lighthouse
Gulf County · Panhandle & Emerald Coast
An 1885 iron skeleton tower that lost three predecessors to storms, moved whole to Port St. Joe in 2014 and open to climb.
ABOUT THIS PLACE
Four lighthouses have stood at Cape San Blas. The first, built in 1849 and about 85 feet tall, fell in a gale in the fall of 1851. The rebuilt tower of 1856 was destroyed within months by an August storm. A third went up in 1858 with a third-order Fresnel lens. The fourth, the white square iron skeleton tower still standing, was built in 1885, encloses a stair cylinder, and rises 98 feet, about 101 feet above the water, with a light visible some 16 miles out. Erosion kept chasing it; the tower was moved a quarter mile north along the peninsula in 1919. On July 15, 2014, the lighthouse, both keepers' quarters and the oil house were moved off the cape altogether, moving in a 900-foot convoy that needed power lines and traffic signals taken down, to George Core Park in Port St. Joe. It reopened to climbers that September during the Florida Scallop and Music Festival, and 249 people went up that first weekend. The St. Joseph Historical Society runs it; it entered the National Register of Historic Places in 1981. The keepers' quarters hold a gift shop and historical material, and it opens Wednesday through Saturday from 11 to 5, though hours change and it is worth telephoning
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