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Junior Service League’s Legacy Remains
In 1970, a suspicious fire gutted the abandoned Keepers’ House located at the St. Augustine Light Station. The following year, St. Johns County purchased the property from the United States Coast Guard with the intention of demolishing the burned-out shell of the building. Enter the Junior Service League of St. Augustine and the idea of restoring the Keepers’ House as a museum and community center. The women of the JSL [...]
Muskets Added to Wrecked! Exhibit
The Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program (LAMP) Conservation team installed a new case in the Wrecked! Exhibit. This new case replaces the Star Waters mannequin and features one of the muskets recovered from the Storm Wreck, the American Revolution-era shipwreck excavated in 2009. Other artifacts associated with the musket including flintlock, flint, shot and even some paper wadding are also featured. The team plans to install a second musket in this [...]
Pittee Descendants Visit the Museum
On Friday, February 10, 2023, the Museum welcomed four descendants of Hezekiah Pittee, the superintendent over the construction of the St. Augustine Lighthouse tower between 1871 and 1874. The descendants made the trip from Tampa for a family member's funeral here and reached out to the Museum. The descendants (pictured above) sat down with Jason Titcomb, Chief Curator; Lee Capitano, Retail and Finance Director; and Rick Cain, Museum Operations Director.During [...]
HAM – Our Last Line of Communication
International Lighthouse Lightship Weekend (ILLW) 2022 We’ve probably all seen the recent news of the severe flooding in Eastern Kentucky or the wildfires in California. In each case, as in all disaster scenarios, homes and lives are destroyed, and communication breaks down. It’s tough to call for help when the power is out, and the internet and cellular service are down. Since ancient times, lighthouses served as physical signals of [...]
Written in History
(Photo credit: Mark Krancer) Memorial Park is a historic city park located on the north side of the St. Johns River in Jacksonville, Florida. Following World War I, the Rotary Club of Jacksonville created the park to commemorate the Floridians who died in WWI, with a large copper statue serving as a memorial. At the statue’s base, a time capsule was interred on December 24, 1924, containing a scroll with [...]
The Tragedy of the U.S.S. Indianapolis
In August of 1939, Albert Einstein and other scientists sent a letter to then U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt warning of a Nazi program that could develop a nuclear bomb. In response to this threat, Roosevelt authorized the Manhattan Project to proceed under the guidance of General Leslie Groves, the development of America's first nuclear weapon. President Roosevelt died on April 12th of 1945, and Harry Truman assumed his presidency, during [...]
A Letter to Santa from the St. Augustine Lighthouse
This December, the St. Augustine Record republished a series of Letters to Santa printed in the St. Augustine Evening Record from December 1921. Peter Willott, a reporter for the Record, worked with the staff at the St. Augustine Historical Society's Research Library to gather these letters. One of the letters came from little Eloise Malloy, the only daughter of Clarence and Agnes Malloy. Clarence served as the First Assistant Keeper [...]
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo – From Florida
In the months immediately following the December 7th attack in 1941 on the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, American resolve was codified into a call for action. Something had to be done quickly to send a message to Imperial Japan that they were not out of our reach. Payback was coming. In this photo is what appears to be a Japanese Aichi D3A1 Dive Bomber taking up an [...]
Heritage Boatworks Boat Drawing
The Heritage Boatworks boat drawing is a tradition held on Luminary Night every year. This year, the event will take place on first Wednesday in December. Heritage Boatworks is a group of volunteers dedicated to keeping the art and skill of wooden boatbuilding alive in St. Augustine. The St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum will select two lucky winners at the annual Luminary Night event. Each winner will receive one [...]
Lighthouse Illuminations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL-ram8nVZ4&t=2s Visit the Museum during Nights of Lights for Tides, Tidings, and Trees. Daytime general admission tickets get you in the door to enjoy seasonally decorated grounds and buildings. As the sun goes down, purchase after-hours Lighthouse Illumination tickets for an extraordinary experience. Explore the Keepers’ house and grounds illuminated by lights and garlands, and enjoy a sensational view of the Lighthouse’s night mark. Spots are filling up quickly, as [...]
Crescent Beach Shipwreck: The Caroline Eddy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBJJirfR2wc (Drone footage courtesy of Eric Wilson, LAMP Volunteer) The entirety of the Crescent Beach Shipwreck Maritime archaeologists from the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum’s research arm, Lighthouse Archaeological Maritime Program (LAMP), have documented the entirety of the Crescent Beach Shipwreck site. In November 2020, LAMP was notified of a previously unknown shipwreck that had become exposed on the southern end of Crescent Beach. Local beachgoers noticed the wooden [...]
A new Barca Chata and a History of Boatbuilding in St. Augustine
Heritage Boatworks, a Nation’s Oldest Port® program at the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum, just finished a Barca Chata, which is Spanish for flatboat. This simple flat-bottomed boat design saw widespread use in colonial America and continued through the beginning of the 20th century. Heritage Boatworks, a volunteer-run program dedicated to keeping the tradition of boatbuilding alive in St. Augustine, also made a separate Barca Chata, which was recently [...]
Seagulls on Patrol
When we think of U.S. Naval Aviation, most of us immediately picture the mighty aircraft carriers, decks bristling with a wide array of aviation assets that can take to the sky at a moment’s notice. But aircraft carriers, as impressive as they are, are not the only vessels to launch and recover aircraft while underway at sea. In fact, they were not the first to do so either. Navies worldwide [...]
Celebrate the end of summer with the Wrecked! Exhibit!
Did you know that the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum's Wrecked! Exhibit is based around a shipwreck from the Revolutionary War? Check out our Director of Archaeology, Chuck Meide, as he gives a tour of the Wrecked! Exhibit. Access to the exhibit is included in general admission. Link to video on Wrecked! Exhibit Above: LAMP archaeologist working on a shipwreck. Above: Field school students actively participate in survey work [...]
Thank You, Volunteers!
April is National Volunteer Month and this past week (April 18 - 24, 2021) was Volunteer Appreciation Week. This past week our Executive Director, Kathy Fleming, addressed our volunteers to thank them for their service, dedication, support, and hard work this past year. As you know, COVID-19 has changed the nonprofit landscape so much, but our volunteers and staff have partnered to keep our Museum's mission and work going even [...]