Middle Bay Light, Wooden screw-pile lighthouse in Mobile Bay, Alabama, US
Middle Bay Light is a hexagonal wooden lighthouse standing on screw piles in Mobile Bay near Alabama. The structure rises approximately 14.5 meters above the water and demonstrates late 19th-century engineering approaches to building in marine environments.
The lighthouse was built in 1885 to guide vessels through a newly dredged shipping channel that improved access to the Port of Mobile. Its construction represented efforts to support growing maritime traffic in the region during that period.
The lighthouse's name comes from its position in the middle of Mobile Bay, marking the dredged Mobile Ship Channel. Its white light flashed red every 30 seconds from about 12 metres above the water. The keeper and his family lived in the hexagonal wooden cottage, which was automated in 1935 and has been unoccupied since.
The lighthouse is best viewed from the water and can be reached by boat in Mobile Bay. Visitors should be aware that the interior is not open to the public since the structure now operates automatically as a navigation aid.
In 1916 the keeper's wife gave birth at the station, and because she could not nurse, the keeper brought a dairy cow and corralled it on part of the lower deck. The family and the cow were evacuated when a hurricane damaged the lighthouse that same year.
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