A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of physical structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lenses and to serve as a beacon for navigational aid for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways.
Race Rock Light is a lighthouse on Race Rock Reef, a dangerous set of rocks on Long Island Sound southwest of Fishers Island, New York and the site of many shipwrecks. It is currently owned and maintained by the New London Maritime Society as part of the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act program.
The Cape Florida Light is a lighthouse on Cape Florida at the south end of Key Biscayne in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Constructed in 1825, it guided mariners off the Florida Reef, which starts near Key Biscayne and extends southward a few miles offshore of the Florida Keys. It was operated by staff, with interruptions, until 1878, when it was replaced by the Fowey Rocks lighthouse. The lighthouse was put back into use in 1978 by the U.S. Coast Guard to mark the Florida Channel, the deepest natural channel into Biscayne Bay. They decommissioned it in 1990.
Alligator Reef Light is located 4 nautical miles east of Indian Key, near the Matecumbe Keys of Florida in the United States, north of Alligator Reef itself. The station was established in 1873. It was automated in 1963 and was last operational in July, 2014, and is being replaced by a 16' steel structure with a less powerful light located adjacent to it. The structure is an iron pile skeleton with a platform. The light is 136 feet (41 m) above the water. It is a white octagonal pyramid skeleton framework on black pile foundation, enclosing a square dwelling and a stair-cylinder. The lantern is black. The original lens was a first order bivalve Fresnel lens. The light characteristic of the original light was: flashing white and red, every third flash red, from SW by W 1/2 W through southward to NE 1/8 E, and from NE by E 3/4 E through northward to SW 3/8 S; flashing red throughout the intervening sectors; interval between flashes 5 seconds. It had a nominal range of 14 nautical miles in the white sectors and 11 nautical miles in the red sectors. The new light has a range of approximately 7 nautical miles.
Carysfort Reef Light is located on Carysfort Reef east of Key Largo, Florida. The lighthouse has an iron-pile foundation with a platform, and a skeletal, octagonal, pyramidal tower, which is painted red. The light was 100 feet (30 m) above the water. It was the oldest functioning lighthouse of its type in the United States until it was decommissioned in 2015, having been completed in 1852. The light last installed was a xenon flashtube beacon. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
Sombrero Key Light is located offshore of Vaca Key in Marathon, Florida. The lighthouse is located on a mostly submerged reef. The name Sombrero Key goes back to the Spanish, and old charts show a small island at the spot, but by the later 19th Century the island had eroded away, with some parts of the reef exposed at low tide. As a result, the reef and the lighthouse have also been called Dry Banks.
The American Shoal Light is located east of the Saddlebunch Keys, just off Sugarloaf Key, close to Looe Key, in Florida, United States. It was completed in 1880, and first lit on July 15, 1880. The structure was built to the same plan and dimensions as the Fowey Rocks lighthouse, completed in 1878.
The Dry Tortugas Light is a lighthouse located on Loggerhead Key, three miles west of Fort Jefferson, Florida. It was taken out of operation in 2015. It has also been called the Loggerhead Lighthouse. It has been said to be "a greater distance from the mainland than any other light in the world."
The Garden Key Light, also known as the Tortuga Harbor Light, is located at Fort Jefferson, on Garden Key in the Dry Tortugas, Florida. The first lighthouse, started in 1824 and first lit in 1826, was a brick conical tower. The lighthouse and its outbuildings were the only structures on Garden Key until construction started on Fort Jefferson in 1846. Construction continued until 1861, but the fort was never completed.
Sand Key Light is a lighthouse 6 nautical miles southwest of Key West, Florida, between Sand Key Channel and Rock Key Channel, two of the channels into Key West, on a reef intermittently covered by sand. At times the key has been substantial enough to have trees, and in 1900 nine to twelve thousand terns nested on the island. At other times the island has been washed away completely. The light marks the southernmost point of the Hawk Channel passage along the Florida Keys.
The unmanned reef lights of the Florida Keys were navigational aids erected near the Florida Keys between 1921 and 1935.
The Ponce de Leon Inlet Light is a lighthouse and museum located at Ponce de León Inlet in Central Florida. At 175 feet (53 m) in height, it is the tallest lighthouse in the state and one of the tallest in the United States. It is located between St. Augustine Light and Cape Canaveral Light. Restored by the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse Preservation Association, the lighthouse became a National Historic Landmark in 1998.
Ile Aux Galets Light, also known as Skillagalee Island Light, is located on Ile Aux Galets, a gravelly, low-lying island in northeast Lake Michigan, between Beaver Island and the mainland, approximately 7 miles (11 km) northwest of Cross Village in Emmet County, Michigan. Along with nearby Grays Reef, Waugoshance, and White Shoal Lights, it warns shipping away from the reefs and shoals of Waugoshance Point, which pose an imminent hazard to navigation.
Port Austin Lighthouse is a lighthouse off the shore of Lake Huron, about 2.5 miles (4.0 km) north of Port Austin, Huron County Michigan sitting on a rocky reef (shoal), which is just north of the tip of the Thumb and a real hazard to navigation.
The lighthouse at Fourteen Foot Shoal was named to note that the lake is only 14 feet (4.3 m) deep at this point, which is a hazard to navigation, ships and mariners.
The Rock of Ages Light is a U.S. Coast Guard lighthouse on a small rock outcropping approximately 2.25 miles (3.62 km) west of Washington Island and 3.5 miles (5.6 km) west of Isle Royale, in Eagle Harbor Township, Keweenaw County, Michigan. It is an active aid to navigation.
Spectacle Reef Light is a lighthouse 11 miles (18 km) east of the Straits of Mackinac and is located at the northern end of Lake Huron, Michigan. It was designed and built by Colonel Orlando Metcalfe Poe and Major Godfrey Weitzel, and was the most expensive lighthouse ever built on the Great Lakes.
The Florida Reef is the only living coral barrier reef in the continental United States. It lies a few miles seaward of the Florida Keys, is about 4 miles wide and extends along the 20-metre (66 ft) depth contour 270 km from Fowey Rocks just east of Soldier Key to just south of the Marquesas Keys. The system encompasses more than 6,000 individual reefs. Florida waters are home to over 500 marine fish and mammal species along with more than 45 species of stony corals and 35 species of octocorals.
SS Arratoon Apcar was an iron-hulled sail and steam merchant ship that was built in Scotland in 1861 and wrecked off the coast of Florida in 1878. Her wreck in shallow water on Fowey Rocks is now a scuba diving site.
Hawk Channel is a shallow, elongated basin and navigable passage along the Atlantic coast of the Florida Keys. The channel makes up a smaller portion of the Florida Platform from Key West to the southernmost point of Key Biscayne and lies between the Keys and the Florida Reef Tract to the southeast. It connects the waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean through tidal exchanges crossing from the Florida Bay to the Straits of Florida.
