Alligator Reef FL
Harbour Lights #395

Alligator Reef was named to honor the crew of the United States Navy schooner Alligator that went aground, at the reef, in 1822. The Alligator, returning from a successful routing of pirates, from the West Indies, was escorting a small flotilla of liberated vessels returning north.

In 1857, the Lighthouse Board made a request for an iron skeletal lighthouse to be built on the reef. No appropriation was made that year and the intervening Civil War and the Reconstruction held the project off for more than a decade.

In 1870, the United States Congress appropriated the necessary funds to construct a light at Indian Key four nautical miles from the reef. Paulding Kembel, Cold Springs, NY was contracted to forge the iron tower.

The reef was leveled and nine iron disks, eight on the corners and one, in the center were set a top the coral. The foundation piles that would be driven through the iron disks were 26’ in length with a 12" diameter. To drive the piles just 1", a steam powered pile driver raised a 2,000 pound "hammer" into the air 18’ before crashing on to the pile. Each pile was driven 10’ into the coral!

Completed at a cost of $185,000, the 136’ iron tower was first lit on November 23, 1873. The revolving, First Order Fresnel lens had a characteristic of "a series of 5 white flashes followed by a single red flash." The Keeper’s dwelling was a single square room set on a platform high above the water.

Alligator Reef was automated in 1963.

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