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Sapelo Island Light (Sapelo Island, Georgia)
Sixty miles south of Savannah is the coastal
town of Darien, Georgia. During the early 1800s this town became an important
shipping port. Five acres of land
on the south end of Sapelo Island, just off the coast from the town of Meridian,
Georgia, was sold to the U.S. Government for the purpose of establishing a
lighthouse. In 1820, Winslow Lewis
of Boston received a contract to build an 80-foot lighthouse and a keeper’s
quarters on the land. The lighthouse was a 65-foot circular brick
tower with a 15-foot iron lantern room on top. The light system contained
fifteen 16-inch parabolic oil lamps on a revolving platform.
A 4th-order Fresnel lens was installed in 1854. During the Civil War the retreating
confederate troops removed the lens and destroyed the reflector system. The tower itself, however, was not destroyed.
Following the war, in 1868, the light tower was repaired and reactivated.
The tower was painted at this time with wide alternating red and white
horizontal bands. In 1877 a 25-foot
cast iron range beacon was constructed 660 feet east of the main tower. During a hurricane in October of 1898 a lot
of Sapelo Island was overrun with water. The water covered the lower 18 feet of
the lighthouse tower resulting in serious damage to the foundation. Attempts over the next couple of years to stabilize the
towers foundation were unsuccessful and in 1902 it was decided to build a new
lighthouse a few hundred feet to the north of the old tower. The new lighthouse was lit on September 8th,
1905. It was a 100-foot steel
pyramidal (skeletal) tower. Two keeper’s quarters were also built at the new
location. The lights were upgraded
to incandescent oil-vapor lights in 1913. Over the years the Darien harbor was being
used less and less. By 1933
shipping traffic had pretty much stopped. It
was this year that the U.S. Lighthouse Service decided to decommission the
Sapelo Island Light. The skeletal
tower was disassembled and shipped to a new site at South Fox Island in Lake
Michigan where is still stands today. The
keeper’s homes were torn down and the wood sold for scrap. The original brick tower on Sapelo Island
was never torn down, but being an unused tower it was deteriorating over time.
In 1994 the Georgia Department of Natural Resources submitted a grant
application to restore the lighthouse. The grant was awarded and work begun. The first order of business was to perform a
complete inspection of the existing structure and then from the information
collected construction documents were prepared.
The restoration included: repairing the exterior stucco, and painting the
tower with the 1890 red and white day mark, replacing the doors and windows,
reconstructing the interior wooded spiral staircase, repairing the lantern room
and replacing the glass, and installing a new light that had the same 45-second
flash pattern as the original light. The restoration also included the oil house, cistern, and
near by range beacon. Work began in
1997 and was completed in 1998. A dedication and re-lighting ceremony was held
on September 6, 1998. The total
cost of the restoration project was $494,838 with about half being from private
contributions. The lighthouse currently functions as a
private aid to navigation. Directions:
Sapelo Island is a limited access island. Tours are provided by the
Sapelo Island Visitor Center in Meridian, Georgia on Saturdays and certain
weekdays during the month. Other
than that, the only way to visit the island is to be an invited guest of one of
the local residents on the island. Names
of those residents who are willing to give private tours can be obtained by
calling the Visitor Center in Meridian.
[Back to the Georgia Lighthouses Page]
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All pictures are the original work of Rick Totton and are protected under copyright laws. Do not reproduce any images from this website without permission of the author. Copyright (c) 2000 Rick Totton.
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