The Inside Story

For over 30 years, we have been trekking down from Tallahassee to the lighthouse at St. Marks. A few years ago, I was able to take my first picture of it from the seaside from our son's boat. That was pretty cool. Today "marked" another St. Marks first: we got to go inside the keeper's house that is attached to the light tower itself.

The picture above was taken last November. Today the place was absolutely crawling with people, who like us had come for the WHO, the Wildlife Heritage and Outdoors Festival. We have never seen it so populated.

The shuttered windows were open and I took pictures from the inside.

The stairs to the top were not open to the public, but the entrance was.

There was a blueprint of the lighthouse.

It shows the double wall that tapers from 4 feet thick at the bottom to 18 inches thick at the light. A previous lighthouse there had had a solid wall which weighed too much to support itself, and cracked and was taken down.

(The teacher in me cringed to see the typo in the next to the last line.) The mother of our friend (in the scout shirt in an above picture) went to school with the Gresham daughters.

The front door: nice view.

http://www.stmarksrefuge.org/lighthouse.cfm has good information and history of the lighthouse.

In the scheme of things, our 30 years of observation has been brief. This lighthouse has stood on this site for 166 years, a testament to the builders and keepers of St. Marks. If these thick walls could talk, we'd get the real inside story, the real story of the people who lived and worked here.