St. Simons Island Light, Maritime beacon in St. Simons Island, Georgia, US

St. Simons Island Light is a 104-foot brick tower painted white, with black iron gallery railing and lantern at the top and a single small rectangular window set in the wall. At its base stands the 1872 one-story red brick keeper's house, with a brown shingled roof, white trim, a red metal porch roof on white columns, and two arched windows above the porch. A cast iron spiral stairway of 129 steps rises inside the tower.

The first lighthouse here, an octagonal tower built in 1810, was destroyed in 1862 by retreating Confederate troops so it could not guide Union warships during the naval blockade. The U.S. government built the present 104-foot brick tower west of the original site, completing it in 1872 with a third-order biconvex Fresnel lens. It was overhauled in 1876, converted to a 1,000-watt electric lamp in 1934 and fully automated in 1953.

The keeper's house next door has been turned into a museum where you can see old maritime items, historical photos, and furniture that show how people lived along Georgia's coast.

You can climb the interior stairs to reach the observation deck, which is usually open in fair weather conditions. The museum area on the ground level is accessible year-round and does not require climbing.

The third-order biconvex Fresnel lens is one of 79 still in operation in the United States, and 15 of those are in the South, with two in Georgia. It turns to send four beams, giving one strong flash every 60 seconds. During the 2010 repainting the lens was bubble-wrapped, shrink-wrapped and boxed in plywood, while a temporary spotlight on the gallery kept guiding ships.