MIAMI HERALD
Posted - Sunday, June 19, 2011 08:00 AM EDT
Fowey Rocks Light is the northernmost Keys lighthouse. It still functions as a maritime beacon despite being constructed way back in 1878.
Wanna buy a lighthouse? Here's your chance: The U.S. government has put the picturesque, 133-year-old Fowey Rocks Light up for adoption. The price is right: Free. Sure, there's a catch or two. You must run a nonprofit group or local government and prove you can preserve and maintain the historic lighthouse for public use. And you need a good boat. The Fowey Rocks Light sits on a shallow reef out in the ocean some seven miles southeast of the tip of Key Biscayne.
But for lighthouse fanciers -- and there are more of them than you think - the government's decision to divest itself of Fowey Rocks represents a long-awaited opportunity.
Leaders of the Florida Keys Reef Lights Foundation have been trying for 10 years to enable public access to six offshore beacons strung between Key Biscayne and Key West, and they say they will immediately apply to become Fowey Rocks' new owners.
"We would really like people to come out there and be able to climb up the lighthouse," said foundation President Eric S. Martin. "We like to climb. We like the view from the top."
Fowey Rocks, still a working light, is the northern-most of the six Keys beacons, and though not the oldest -- that distinction belongs to the 1852 Carysfort Reef Light off Key Largo -- it's architecturally perhaps the finest.
From a distance its cast-iron skeleton resembles an oil derrick, but an up-close view reveals its charms: Suspended on a platform amid the 110-foot tower is an octagonal, two-story Victorian keeper's house with a Mansard roof. An iron funnel containing a staircase rises from the house to the light, which is topped by a cupola and solar panels to power the automated beacon.
Sitting in the protected waters of Biscayne National Park and sheltering an abundance of reef fish, the Fowey Rocks Light is already an attraction for divers, snorkelers and boaters. But its rundown dock and the tower itself are off-limits.
The government has been gradually ceding its store of historic lighthouses for the past decade, in part to relieve the U.S. Coast Guard of the expense of and responsibility for general upkeep, but also to ensure their permanence and enable public access. Many lighthouses have been turned into popular museums, including Florida's St. Augustine lighthouse, among the first to be let go by the government.
Fowey Rocks, listed in the National Register of Historic Places in January, is one of 12 historic lighthouses being offered this year. Like some of the others, it will still remain in use as a navigational aid, with the Coast Guard in charge of the minimal maintenance required to keep the beacon lit.
Whoever undertakes its restoration will face a formidable -- and probably costly and complicated -- task, especially given its location. For one thing, many contractors won't work offshore, Martin said. If his group gains ownership, he said, it would be eligible for restoration grants, including some that will be funded by a new Florida lighthouse auto tag.
The lighthouse would be auctioned off if no group or government qualifies to take over.
Once completed, Fowey Rocks and the other Keys lights of similarly ingenious design -- the supports were screwed directly into the hard reef surface below the water -- proved virtually impervious to hurricanes, which could blow out the lights but left the iron structures unscathed.
Fowey Rocks, named after a Royal Navy man-of-war that foundered nearby in 1748, replaced the landmark brick-and-mortar Cape Florida lighthouse at the tip of Key Biscayne, and to this day remains the principal beacon guiding sea traffic safely past the reef and into Biscayne Bay.
Its famed Fresnel lens -- which was exhibited at the World's Fair in Philadelphia marking the U.S. Centennial in 1876 even before its installation at Fowey Rocks -- was removed along with the last keepers after the light was automated in 1974.
But the lighthouse's allure persists. On clear days, it can be discerned from the Cape Florida lighthouse, a phantom on the horizon. Park rangers point it out to visitors to Boca Chita island in Biscayne National Park. And lots of people find their way to the light and the crystal-clear waters around it on their own, said ranger Gary Bremen.