After sitting dark for a decade, Alligator Reef Light in the Florida Keys is shining again. An Islamorada community group is spending $6 million to restore and preserve the 150-year-old lighthouse. The group turned on its new solar-powered lights last Saturday.
In 1822, the U.S. Navy schooner Alligator, part of the U. S. Navy Anti-Piracy Squadron that had been established in Key West, went aground on a reef southeast of Upper Matecumbe Key in the Florida Keys. In 1873, a lighthouse was built just north of Alligator Reef, named after the ill-fated schooner. It was automated in 1963 and was last operational in July 2014, when it was replaced by a 16′ steel structure with a less powerful light located adjacent to it.
On February 1, 2019, it was announced that the lighthouse would be given away freely to any government agencies, educational agencies, non-profit corporations, or any community development organizations who wanted to use it for “educational, park, recreational, cultural or historic preservation purposes.”
“Alligator Lighthouse was lit in 1873 and it stayed lit until about 2013, and then it went dark for 10 years,” said Rob Dixon, the executive director of Save Alligator Lighthouse, which took over the lighthouse’s title in late 2021. “And now our Statue of Liberty is lit once again.”
The naming of a lighthouse after the SV that sank on the reef is a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has fled.
I may have already mentioned (memory isn’t what it used to be) that in Sweden they will name (unless you ask them not to) a previously uncharted rock after a vessel that was holed by it and sunk. I think the Swedish hydrographers are taking the lazy route.