Where the lights live.

Nestled along Mississippi's 75-mile shoreline, high atop cone-, pyramid-, and even cottage-shaped lighthouses, is where the lights live, or--more correctly--lived. All but one are gone. No longer do the lights actually exist as live flame like they once did, providing guidance to safe harbors for sailors, fishermen, or weary travelers. Once, more than 10 lighthouses guarded the Gulf waters from the Alabama state line to the Louisiana border. Today, those lights have faded almost completely away.

Throughout the expanse of the Mississippi Sound, the only original lighthouse still in place is the Biloxi lighthouse. Built in 1848--the same year that the foundation for the Washington Monument was laid and the University of Mississippi was established--it stands today as the most distinctive symbol of the Mississippi Gulf Coast. No other man-made structure so identifies the area. The still-illuminated 155-year-old tower is an image indelibly etched into the minds of perhaps millions of people from around the world.

The 48-foot-tall conical brick structure is sheathed in a strong cast iron armor-like skin that has enabled it to withstand every hurricane, gale, and squall Mother Nature has sent her way over the past century and a half. Time-tested, she stands like the proud sentinel she is, gleaming under her pristine coat of beach-white paint. She looks nothing like her age. She doesn't act it, either. Now under the management of the Biloxi City Department of Museums, her light shines 365 nights a year. Controlled by an electrical timer, the beam of light comes from her original Fresnel lens and is visible from 13 miles away.

It hasn't always been that way. During the Civil War, her light went out. Actually, the boys in gray buried the French-designed brass lamp and reflectors in the sand in a successful effort to keep the lighthouse from being useful to the Federal navy. After the war, the lens was recovered and placed back into what was by then a somewhat ran-down tower. During the war, the annual (and sometimes more frequent) whitewashing of the iron sheathing had not taken place. It doesn't take wind-driven sand and sea salt long to strip paint from iron. By the middle of 1865, the tower was encrusted in rest from top to bottom. There was a rumor several years ago that during this period, the lighthouse was painted black in sympathy for the death of Abraham Lincoln. It is highly unlikely that in the shadow of Beauvoir, Lincoln would have been so honored by those who had only recently buried their dead. What is likely is that some caretaker of the lighthouse, perhaps the keeper himself, swabbed the resting sides of the structure with an oil-based, tar-like substance in a desperate attempt to preserve the metal until funds could be acquired for its proper repainting.

The iron lady on the beach had another problem during this same period. Her foundation started to wash away. A retaining wall that had been neglected during the war failed. An 1867 engineer's report indicated that the tower had "inclined at least two feet from perpendicular" and was "in danger of toppling into [the] Mississippi sound." The problem was solved when workers carefully excavated just enough from under the northeast side of the structure to allow it "to ease itself to upright under its own massive weight."

Again in the early 1900s, the tower was plagued by erosion. This time, hundreds of stones were brought in from Ship Island and placed as riprap around the base of the tower. These stones were retrieved from near the 310-foot-wide channel that ran from the end of the Gulfport pier to Ship Island's harbor. At the time, the seven-mile channel wasn't deep enough for the large ocean-going vessels, so timber and other cargo were floated via smaller craft out to Ship Island for loading onto the big ships. Captains of tall-masted ships and steamships from Europe and Asia, and from the Baltic to the southernmost nations of South America, ordered their sailors to toss overboard stones, which served as ballasts during their incoming voyages. Now, a full century later, the Biloxi lighthouse is no longer in danger from erosion. It is secured by stones from Wales and Newcastle, by portions of boulders from the Pyrenees to the Andes, and by rock from the Holy Land.

In the waning years of the 17th century, when French mariners first sailed into what is now the Mississippi Sound, they initially focused their attention on the small islands that act as sentries, guarding our state's shoreline. The deep water at Ship Island made the tiny isle a perfect port for ships of the sea. Some 150 years later, under the leadership of U.S. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, Ship Island was selected as a coastal defense site. A brick cone-shaped lighthouse, almost identical to the Biloxi tower, was completed in 1853. Disabled during the war but quickly repaired by Union militia, it stood until 1886, when it was replaced by what has been described as a square wooden pyramid. The beacon atop this station was first lighted in September 1886, a month before the Statue of Liberty was dedicated in New York Harbor by President Grover Cleveland. (The Statue of Liberty was the nation's first lighthouse powered by electricity.) Constructed much like a forest fire tower with the sides enclosed with planks of pine lumber, the Ship Island lighthouse was a popular tourist attraction. So well-known and admired was this "wooden pyramid" that it became the logo for the Coast's largest banking institution, Hancock Bank. Unfortunately, during the night of June 27, 1972, two young campers who had started a small fire failed to extinguish the blaze, and after their departure, it grew into an inferno that could be seen for miles. By morning, all that was left of the lighthouse was the concrete foundation. A replica now stands in its place, and although it is a nice look-alike, it isn't used for navigation.

The two oldest of the Mississippi Sound's lighthouses were the Cat Island lighthouse and the Pass Christian city tower, both of which dated from 1831. The tower on Cat Island was constructed of brick and stood 34 feet tall. Apparently it was wrecked by a hurricane in 1860 and destroyed one year later by Confederate forces. In July 1871, a prefabricated cottage-like structure on screw piles arrived via ship from New England and was installed as Cat Island's second and last lighthouse. By 1900, the island had so shifted from storms and sand erosion that the lighthouse no longer stood on the land but was surrounded by shallow water some 100 yards to the southwest.

The Pass Christian lighthouse is described in the booklet Lighthouses and Lightships of the Northern Gulf of Mexico by David L. Cipra as a "stubby white brick tower." The lens and lighting apparatus were confiscated by the Confederacy during the war and hidden, and the light was not made operational again until August 15, 1865. However, by the late 1800s, trees between the light and the beach had grown so tall that the beacon was no longer effective. The owner of the trees reportedly did not want to cut them, and the government refused to spend additional funds to build the tower taller, so the lighthouse and its small acreage was sold to a private citizen in 1882, and the tower was dismantled for salvage. The Pass Christian Lighthouse Society now hopes to eventually reconstruct the city's lighthouse.

The Pascagoula River lighthouse was originally erected in 1854 on the west bank of the East Pascagoula River on a piece of land known as Spanish Point that jutted out near the mouth of the clear water stream. Like the other coastal lighthouses, during the war, its light from a fifth-order lens, visible for 10 miles, was extinguished by the Confederates as a defensive measure. Its flame, supplied by kerosene, was not rekindled until April 20, 1868. The logging industry--the bootstrap by which the state of Mississippi was able to pull itself up after the war--jumped into high gear along the coasts in the 1880s, when the vast virgin yellow pine forests were beginning to be cut. This harvest, which created almost constant river traffic, made the Pascagoula lighthouse a critical player in the economic development of Jackson, George, Greene, and Perry counties. Unfortunately, at the very height of this boom, disaster struck. On September 27, 1906, a powerful hurricane, remembered for generations as the "Great September Storm," brought death and destruction over a 175-mile area from Pascagoula to McComb. The lighthouse was all but flattened. Although the light itself withstood the winds and rain, the structure was so dangerously weakened that it had to be dismantled. (The light keeper's home, a modest cottage that stood nearby, survived almost intact and was used for the next 50 years as a minor light attendant station.)

That same night, three miles out into the sound, the Round Island lighthouse also took a beating from the wind, waves, and rain, but it held strong. The original 40-foot-tall Round Island lighthouse had been constructed in 1833, but in 1855, it was determined by government officials that it had been built too close to the shoreline, according to the Round Island Lighthouse Preservation Society in Pascagoula. So $8,000 was appropriated for a new lighthouse and keeper's dwelling, which was completed in 1859. This lighthouse was decommissioned in 1949, and on September 28, 1998, Hurricane Georges smashed the old tower at Round Island to pieces. Only its 170-year-old foundation can be seen today, but members of the lighthouse preservation group hope to change that vista soon. The remains of the lighthouse were recovered and stored after the 1998 storm, and plans are underway to create a permanent foundation for the lighthouse and eventually rebuild it on the island.

The most tragic victim of that "Great September Storm" was the lighthouse on Horn Island. The hurricane-driven 50-foot waves crashed through the lantern, sweeping away lighthouse keeper Charles A. Johnson and his wife and daughter, never to be seen again. By first morning light, rescuers found the once-picturesque light cottage completely gone and one full mile of the east end of the island washed away. Gone too are the St. Joseph's island lighthouse, the Merrill Shell Bank Light, the Proctorville Beacon that was located near Fort Proctor on the southwest shore of Lake Borgne, and the postcard-perfect Lake Borgne Light Station. They have all bowed to stomps, fire, erosion, or time.

Lighthouses like the beautifully proportioned Biloxi tower will likely always be looked upon as symbols of hope and safety. In fact, thousands of people across the globe take comfort daily in these trusted navigational landmarks. Ever since a 400-foot-tall Egyptian lighthouse was erected at Alexandria's Pharos island in 280 B.C., people have admired these man-made symbols of refuge. The ever-inviting warm glow of the beacon offers assurance in the bleakest darkness. It is written, however, that one day, "There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light."