place

Amelia Island North Range Light

1858 establishments in Florida1899 disestablishments in FloridaAmelia IslandHouses completed in 1858Houses completed in 1872
Lighthouses completed in 1858Lighthouses completed in 1872Lighthouses in FloridaTransportation buildings and structures in Nassau County, FloridaUnited States lighthouse stubs
Amelianorthrange
Amelianorthrange

The Amelia Island North Range Light was built to mark a channel over the sandbar at the mouth of the St. Mary's River, which led to the harbor at Fernandina Beach, Florida, on Amelia Island. It consisted of a lighthouse and a front range tower with a light, arranged so that when ships could see one light above the other, they were lined up with the channel. During the Civil War Confederate forces removed the lenses from the lights. Union forces seized Fernandina Beach, Fort Clinch and the lighthouse in 1862. It is known that the front range tower was destroyed during the war. There is no record of when the lighthouse was destroyed, but a new lighthouse was built in 1872. As the channel over the sand bar shifted with time, the front range light was periodically moved to maintain an alignment with the channel. In 1887 the rear range light was moved from the lighthouse to a tramway to permit proper adjustments to be made to the alignment. The light was decommissioned in 1899 after the channel was sufficiently marked with buoys. The lighthouse was listed in a survey in 1924, but has since disappeared.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Amelia Island North Range Light (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Amelia Island North Range Light
Hiking and Biking Trail,

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: Amelia Island North Range LightContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 30.7034 ° E -81.4383 °
placeShow on map

Address

Hiking and Biking Trail
32035
Florida, United States
mapOpen on Google Maps

Amelianorthrange
Amelianorthrange
Share experience

Nearby Places

Original Town of Fernandina Historic Site
Original Town of Fernandina Historic Site

The Original Town of Fernandina Historic Site, also known as "Old Town", is a historic site in Fernandina Beach, Florida, located on Amelia Island. It is roughly bounded by Towngate Street, Bosque Bello Cemetery, Nassau, Marine, and Ladies Streets. On January 29, 1990, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places as a historic site. Lying north of the Fernandina Beach Historic District, it is accessible from North 14th Street. Prior to the arrival of Europeans on what is now Amelia Island, the Old Town site was home to Native Americans. The French, English, and Spanish all maintained a presence on Amelia Island at various times during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, but the Spanish established Fernandina. Old Town, the original location of the town of Fernandina, has the distinction of being the last Spanish city platted in the Western Hemisphere, in 1811. The plat is based on the 1573 Law of the Indies, a document utilized by the Spanish to organize new towns established during their explorations. The area within Old Town known as Plaza San Carlos was the plaza ground in front of the Spanish Fort San Carlos, which is no longer in existence. Today the Plaza San Carlos is maintained by the State of Florida as part of the State Park System. The plaza offers a space for nature study and picnicking. David Levy Yulee, one of the first United States senators from Florida, established the first cross-state railroad running from Fernandina Beach to Cedar Key, which opened on March 1, 1861. When Yulee established the railroad, he platted "new" Fernandina, shifting the town of Fernandina from Old Town to the present location along Centre Street. As a result of this shift, Old Town has become primarily a residential neighborhood. The field work and scholarship of archeologists and historians in the last forty years has advanced understanding of the area's Native American history after European contact. The human occupation of present-day Old Town began around three thousand years ago, and some of the most colorful episodes of Florida history occurred here. Local government has come to realize the singular place Old Town has in telling the story of Fernandina's heritage, and in 1989 the city of Fernandina Beach passed a historic preservation ordinance to protect the district by establishing local boundaries. Old Town has design guidelines for rehabilitation and construction projects, reviewed by the city's Historic District Council. The Old Town preservation and development guidelines focus on lot orientation, an integral part of the process of preserving the 1811 Spanish plan; building aesthetics are also taken into account. The Old Town Historic District was last surveyed as part of the city's 1985 Historic Resources survey. Old Town celebrated the 200th anniversary of its founding on April 2, 2011.

Fort San Carlos
Fort San Carlos

Fort San Carlos was a military structure built in 1816 to defend the Spanish colonial town of Fernandina, Florida, now called Old Town, which occupied a peninsula on the northern end of Amelia Island. The fort, a lunette fortification, stood on the southwest side of the town next to the harbor, on a bluff overlooking the Amelia River. It was made of wood and earthworks, backed with a wooden palisade on the east side, and armed with an eight or ten gun battery. Two blockhouses protected access by land on the south, while the village was surrounded with military pickets. An 1821 map of Fernandina shows that the street plan, laid out in 1811 in a grid pattern by the newly appointed Surveyor General of Spanish East Florida, George J. F. Clarke, today preserves nearly the same layout as that of 1821. The fort occupied the area bounded by the streets Calle de Estrada, Calle de White, and Calle de Someruelos. The structure itself has disappeared and only traces remain in what is now Fernandina Plaza Historic State Park. The park contains the largest known undeveloped portion of the site of Spanish municipal and military activity on Amelia Island dating from the late 1780s. Archaeological investigations, starting in the early 1950s, revealed intermittent occupation and use of the area for as long as 4,000 years, beginning in the Orange period (2000–500 BC) and continuing to this day. A Spanish sentinel house was built in 1696 at the Timuqua village located there. Nearly all of Old Town was built on this Indian village and its shell heaps. In later colonial times the site gained military importance because of its deep harbor and its strategic location near the northern boundary of Spanish Florida.