St. Johns River Lighthouses in Jacksonville, Florida

The two towers are the 1859 brick St. Johns River Lighthouse, dark since 1929 or 1930, and the 1954 concrete St. Johns Light, which still marks the river entrance.

Both stand inside Naval Station Mayport. The 2017 National Register nomination for the St. Johns Light, certified by the Coast Guard in November 2017, places the newer light 0.8 mile south of the St. Johns River and 1.8 miles southeast of the nineteenth century St. Johns River Lighthouse, which it describes as a historic property owned by the U.S. Navy, also called the Mayport Lighthouse, and already included in the National Register of Historic Places.

The figures differ between the Coast Guard Historian's records and the National Register files, and the table keeps both rather than choosing one.

Shifting sand and erosion at the river mouth undermined the first two towers, so the 1859 tower was the third St. Johns River Lighthouse.

The older National Register nomination form for the tower, which gives Naval Station Mayport as the preparer's address, records that on May 23, 1828 Congress appropriated $6,500 for a lighthouse at the mouth of the St. Johns River in the Territory of Florida, that another $7,500 followed on March 2, 1829, and that $10,500 was spent in 1830. With no jetties, the form says, northeasters kept moving the channel, which led to the conclusion that the first lighthouse was built too close to the water's edge and undermined. Congress appropriated $10,500 on June 30, 1834 to rebuild it and $10,000 on August 31, 1852 to make it more secure.

The Coast Guard Historian gives slightly different dates for the first replacement: first tower built 1830, torn down in 1835, and a second one built that year. The 2017 nomination instead has the first tower collapsing in 1833 and the second operating in 1834.

The older nomination adds why the second St. Johns River tower failed. Sand dunes had shifted and almost covered the keeper's house, and the light, behind the dunes, could not be seen when ships got close to the beach. Congress appropriated $15,000 on August 3, 1854 for a light and a beacon light to serve as a range for the channel, which led to the present tower.

The Mayport light was put out during the Civil War and was relit on July 4, 1867, according to the Coast Guard Historian.

The Coast Guard record says a Confederate sympathizer put out the tower's light. The 2017 St. Johns Light nomination says the keeper kept the lighthouse operating after the war broke out in 1861 until Confederate sympathizers disabled its Fresnel lens in 1864, and that it stayed dark until a replacement third order lens was installed in 1867. The older Navy nomination form repeats a story told by old timers crediting John Daniels, caretaker before the war, with defying Union gunboats by putting out the light himself, and says lanterns were used after the war until the light was repaired.

The tower changed shape later in the century. The Coast Guard dates the raising of the tower to its present height to 1887, and the 2017 nomination says that year's work added a cast iron service room and a taller lantern, bringing the height to 81 feet. The older form says the light was almost lost in 1889 when a first order lighthouse was recommended for Fort George Island, a recommendation Congress never acted on.

A lightship replaced the old Mayport tower in 1929, though the official records give three different end dates for the lighthouse itself.

The Coast Guard Historian lists the lighthouse as deactivated in 1929 and replaced by a lightship that year. The older Navy nomination form says it was abandoned on January 15, 1929, replaced by the St. Johns Lightship anchored about eight miles offshore. The 2017 St. Johns Light nomination says Light Vessel 84 arrived at the St. Johns Lightship station, five miles offshore of the river entrance, in 1929, and that the lighthouse was discontinued in May 1930.

The St. Johns lightship had its own history. The 2017 nomination describes LV 84 as a 683-ton, 135-foot steam-powered steel vessel built in 1907 and stationed off Brunswick, Georgia until 1929, with a 13,000 candlepower light visible for 14 miles. It needed a crew of 15 and periodic dry docking, and bad weather sometimes broke or dragged its moorings. The Coast Guard turned the old lighthouse over to the Navy in 1969, and the Coast Guard record gives 1982 for its placement on the National Register.

The Navy's own Naval Station Mayport history remembers an even older lighthouse: in 1890, it says, there was a red brick lighthouse whose foundation was later plainly visible about 100 feet out, surrounded by three feet of water, after a tremendous high tide with a strong northeast wind swept it away.

The St. Johns Light is the concrete lighthouse that replaced the St. Johns Lightship on October 1, 1954 and still serves as an active aid to navigation.

The 2017 National Register nomination says the station was built from late 1953 to 1954 by the James H. Small Construction Company of Jacksonville, at a cost of $78,897, and that it was the last manned lighthouse constructed in Florida. Resident Coast Guard keepers ran it until the beacon was automated in June 1967. In 1994 the Coast Guard replaced the optic with a VRB-25 marine beacon that has a focal plane 83 feet above sea level and is visible for 19 miles in clear weather. The light is number 575 on the Coast Guard's regional aids to navigation list.

The Coast Guard Historian describes the Mayport light as a 64-foot concrete structure poured in one continuous operation and fitted with an aero-marine beacon of 200,000 candles, visible 22 miles at sea; the same record lists the original lens as a 250,000 candlepower airway beacon-type light, so the two figures conflict on the agency's own page. Its listed characteristic is a group flashing white light every 20 seconds, with a red sector.

The station once had an offshore fog signal. The Coast Guard record places it in 37 feet of water off the east end of the south jetty, controlled from the lighthouse by submarine cable, and the 2017 nomination says that structure was struck by a passing ship in 1957, demolished and never rebuilt.

No, both lighthouses stand inside Naval Station Mayport, and neither is open to the public.

The Coast Guard Historian says the St. Johns Light is still in operation as an active aid to navigation and is not open to the public, and the 2017 National Register nomination describes the light as sitting in a fenced grassy clearing on a 5.2-acre Coast Guard parcel, reached by a driveway east of Baltimore Street, and not open to public visitation. The older nomination for the old tower notes that a ground level entrance had been sealed to keep the public from using the 1859 tower.

The Navy has used part of the newer Mayport station for decades. The 2017 nomination says the Coast Guard leased the light's two wings to the Navy in 1986 for office space while keeping control of the tower, and that the Navy remodeled them with partition walls and dropped ceilings.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the Coast Guard Historian's records for both Mayport lights, the two National Park Service National Register nomination files, and the Naval Station Mayport history page.