Cape St. George Lighthouse Collapses Into The Gulf

10/21/2005

The rubble of the Cape St. George Lighthouse just before sunset Friday evening.

by Ed Tiley
Publisher

The 153 year-old Cape St. George Lighthouse, recently declared to be the "most endangered" lighthouse in Florida by the Florida Lighthouse Association has fallen into the ocean.

At about 1:30 on Friday Oct. 21 George Watkins, an employee of the Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve called Roy Ogles at the ANERR office to tell him the lighthouse had fallen. Nobody knows exactly when the lighthouse toppled, but there have been reports of people on St. George Island saying they heard a loud crashing noise about nine o'clock Thursday night. Whether the lighthouse falling would make that kind of noise is unclear, so the exact time the lighthouse fell will always remain a mystery.

Dennis Barnell, president of the St. George Lighthouse Association, described the scene as "pretty ugly." He said, "We’ve got a lot of stuff going on already. The Florida Lighthouse Association has promised they’ll help us raise money to salvage the pieces so they can be reassembled. We are still going to save this lighthouse. The FLA is going to do the best they can to raise all the money we need to hire a salvage barge to pick up the pieces before they get scattered and buried in the sand. We’re in emergency operation mode right now.

We have already been in contact with Fred Gaske, from the Division of Historical Preservation about the situation. The State has no provision for emergency grants. But, they will provide us with an architect to figure how to salvage this thing."

Terry Kemp, secretary of the St. George Lighthouse Association, was quoted by Barnell as saying, "If they can pull a dinosaur up out of the ground and reassemble it, we can pull this lighthouse out of the surf and reassemble it."

That will be a monumental task. It has been estimated that the lighthouse weighed as much as 1,500,00 pounds. How badly busted up the top of the lighthouse is has yet to be discovered. If it is intact, which is doubtful, the job might be easier.

"Maybe all is not lost," said Barnell, "Maybe this unfortunate incident will provide the push we need to get the help we need to rescue the light. We’re pulling out all the stops in trying to find the help we need to rescue the remaining parts of the lighthouse, bring them to shore, and reassemble this lighthouse."