Landmarks & Parks Sterling Silver Charms

A lighthouse serves as a navigational aid that keeps ships and boats safe by warning sailors of risky locations. The lighthouse, the keepers’ residence, and other components make up a light station. These structures aided lightkeepers in their duty.

The first lighthouses were most likely bonfires on the beach. Over 2,000 years ago, Egypt built the first known lighthouse.

Archaeologists have discovered more than 30 lighthouses built by ancient Romans. Boston, Massachusetts, is home to the first British colonial lighthouse. It was constructed in 1716. St. Augustine is home to Florida’s first lighthouse. It was first lit in the year 1824.

The Spanish built wooden towers along the coast to defend St. Augustine when they arrived in 1565. Spanish soldiers probably used bonfires to illuminate their watchtowers, turning them into a primitive sort of lighthouse. There is no trace of them today. The Spanish fortified the wooden watchtower on Anastasia Island with coquina in 1737. When the British conquered Florida, they increased the height of the wooden watchtower. Bonfires may have also been used to illuminate the tower.

The Lighthouse Board concluded in 1870 that St. Augustine needed a new lighthouse. The coquina tower was threatened by land erosion. Keeper William Russell lighted the new lighthouse’s lamp in 1874. The lighthouse sits at the height of 165 feet. The daymark on the tower is a black and white spiral with a red lantern on top. During the day, ships along the shore utilized it as a landmark. The lightkeeper carried oil up 229 stairs to keep the light on until 1936. The lighthouse was electrified around 1936. In 1955, the US Coast Guard automated the lighthouse. The light station’s keepers and their families were no longer required to live there.

The Fresnel lens is an essential feature of the lighthouse. Many prisms are fitted in a steel frame to make the lens. The light from the lighthouse lamp acts as a single intense beam thanks to the lens configuration. The lighthouse in St. Augustine contains a first-order Fresnel lens and a 1000-watt lamp. 370 hand-cut glass prisms make up the lens. Because nighttime is the most dangerous period for ships to sail, it is used after sunset.

Every lighthouse has its own set of daymarks and nightmares. A lighthouse’s daymark is the color and pattern of its paint. The nightmark is a distinctive light pattern. From the sea, sailors can see each daymark and nightmark, which they use to determine where their ships are along the coast.

Lighthouses have traditionally served as civilization’s beacons, architectural icons, human presence and safety symbols, and navigational aids. A harsh seaside lifestyle, protection, salvation, direction, illumination, never-ending watchfulness, steady endurance, and helpfulness have all been associated with them

Lighthouses are far more sophisticated than a few phrases from a symbol dictionary as a psychological symbol. By connecting the sea at its edge, the ground of its base, the air it rises into, and the fire blazing at its highest point, the lighthouse depicts the totality of nature. All four parts are combined in a single construction, symbolizing completeness. The typical circular design of most lighthouse structures may symbolize wholeness, and the tower heights may convey the old aspiration to connect with what is divine and to unite heaven and earth

The central spiral staircase represents ascension and descend. With its rich symbolism and theme of ascension and descent, the spiral is an ancient symbol that appears in myth and ceremonial and is an element of many rites of passage.

The energy was thought to flow in spirals by the ancients. The circle symbolizes solar and lunar power and rivers, rolling thunder, and lightning. Does a lighthouse’s spiral stairway indicate or reflect the swirling winds of storms and the churning hazardous seas beyond the structure?  When nothing else seems to light the path or provide protection, the lighthouse has been employed to provide illumination and guidance. In a series of sand trays done by a young woman searching for and recovering her Self, this was very poignant.