Remembering a visit to Ponce Inlet Lighthouse and Museum from back in April 2016.

The Ponce Inlet Lighthouse and Museum offers a chance to watch the sunset and the full moon rise from the top the lighthouse. An exciting photo opportunity ruined by the perfectly timed arrival of a storm packing lots of rain and lightning.


Built in 1887, Ponce de Leon Inlet Light Station still possesses all of its original buildings. A cluster of homes for the lighthouse keepers and their families now turned into museums highlight life at the Station during its heyday such as the privy exhibit.

Here is a panorama of the Lighthouse and buildings with the storm approaching in the background.

My favorite exhibit at the museum is this artifact from the Spanish-American War.

The advent of the airplane was a new way to reach remote light stations around the nation.

Flags whip in the fierce wind of the approaching storm.

Children of the lighthouse keeper passed the time with these toy horses.

The lighthouse keeper office.

An example of a traveling library box passed around the lighthouses to entertain the keepers and their families.

The big question here is, did Stephen Crane, author of The Red Badge of Courage, once use this marine head? Crane, at the time a war correspondent, was aboard the Commodore which was smuggling guns to Cuban rebels when the ship floundered in a storm and sank off Ponce Inlet on 2 January 1897. The tale of his arduous days in a lifeboat are documented in his short story The Open Boat.

Here comes the rain, there goes our chance to watch the sunset and the full moon rise from the top of the lighthouse.

Our museum guides were optimistic the rain and lightning would pass in time but it only got worse.


Photographed through the car windshield while the rain poured down, the distinctive six beams of light emanating from the lighthouse can be seen here.

View photos from a sunnier visit to Ponce Inlet Lighthouse.