Round Island Lighthouse

Local History

The Round Island Lighthouse is a brick conical-shaped tower erected in 1859 on the southwest side of Round Island to replace an earlier tower built in 1833. Various sources report that the light tower was 60 feet high, although the U.S. Coast Guard Report of Excess Property (1955) indicates the tower was only 50 feet in height and this latter figure will be used in this document.

Round Island is an approximately 110-acre island, of which roughly 50 acres are publicly owned. It is one of several coastal barrier island located in the Mississippi Sound. The island is situated in the middle of the outlets for the East Pascagoula and West Pascagoula Rivers, three miles from the mainland. This position allows considerable erosion and accretion activity to take place on the north, east and west sides of the island. Littoral drift also contributes to this activity.

Round Island is ineptly named as it is actually a long, narrow island. The island is low-lying and subject to overwash during high-intensity storms. It is covered by saltwater marsh over approximately 20% of its surface. Coastal maritime forest, dominated by native slash pine and dense underbrush, and sand dunes and beaches characterize the rest of the island. The slash pine is not considered commercially valuable in view of the cost of cutting, loading on a barge and transporting to the mainland.

The tower on Round Island was constructed to warn shipping of the dangerous shoals which extend southerly from the island. It was no doubt useful as a beacon to mariners approaching Pascagoula Harbor as well as other navigating the coastal waterway located between Round Island and Horn Island to the southwest. The tower once housed a fourth order Fresnel lens whose focal plane stood 44 feet above sea level and was visible at a distance of 12 to 14 miles. At various times, sperm oil, rapeseed oil, lard and kerosene (mineral oil) were probably burned as illuminants. Around 1900, the Lighthouse Board began testing electricity and shortly thereafter began converting lights. However, since many lighthouses were not near power lines, the conversion was slow and many lighthouses had to await installation of generators. By the 1920’s and 1930’s the Lighthouse Board had converted the bulk of lighthouses to electricity (Holland 1972:22-23).

The Round Island Lighthouse was decommissioned as an operational unit on March 20, 1944. All personal property used in the operation at this station was removed immediately subsequent to decommissioning, including the lens in the tower. However, the U.S. Coast Guard at New Orleans maintained the light as a day beacon (not illuminated) until September 19, 1954 (Smith 1977). Finally, in 1955, the General Services Administration declared the property excess to the needs of the Coast Guard and determined that the land was suitable for return to the public domain for disposition under the general public land laws because it was not substantially changed in character by improvements.

At the time that the U.S. Coast Guard relinquished authority to the Lighthouse Reservation in 1955, the Report Of Excess Real Property indicated the following improvements were present:

1. Tower, Lighthouse, Brick, Conical Shaped

50 feet in height, 23 feet 2 inches in diameter at base

2. Building, Dwelling, Single Story Wood Frame

1089 square feet floor space (33 feet by 33 feet)

3. Building, Fuel Storage, Brick

80 square feet floor space (10 feet by 8 feet)

4. Building, Boat House, Wood Frame, on pilings

at end of pier, 400 square feet

5. Pier, Wood Piling with Deck Size 6 feet by 340 feet

The following additional information is available on the improvements listed above:

1. Lighthouse, 1859, brick and concrete construction (reported to be in sound condition in June, 1955). Presently used as daymarker by vessels approaching Pascagoula harbor. The Annual Reports of the Lighthouse Board in 1868 note that repairs had to be made to the gallery deck to render it water-tight due to the unequal expansion of the cast iron and the cement of which the deck was composed. The lantern and gallery are reported to have been cast in one; the gallery being found too small was widened by building out the brick cornice, and the portion outside of the iron gallery was cemented.
2. Lighthouse Keeper’s Dwelling, 1859, Gutted by fire on February 24, 1951 and destroyed by subsequent fire on August 12, 1954. This structure was perched on five solid steel supports approximately 5 inches in diameter and 6 feet high.
3. Fuel Storage Building, 1891, Small brick structure used as storage for inflammables. Annual Reports state it was erected in 1891 and enlarged in 1902. Already reported in 1955 to have had bricks crumbling and mortar deteriorating.
4. Boathouse, Wood Frame construction locate on wood piling at the seaward extremity of pier. Condition as of February 9, 1955 was already reported structurally unsound due to deterioration. The clippings from the Annual Reports, which end abruptly around 1907, indicate that new boathouses were built with frequency – in 1879, 1900, 1902 and again in 1907. Based on this, one can assume a short life span for such structures presumably because of the severity and commonness of damaging storms. The boathouse constructed in 1902 measured 16 by 25 feet.
5. Pier. Piers and wharves were replaced with a frequency rivalling replacement of boathouses. The various piers extended from 300 to 468 feet and were 6 feet wide.

A topographical plan of the Round Island Lighthouse Station made in 1892 or 1893 indicated a grave location of a former keeper. The records formerly kept at the U.S. Coast Guard office in New Orleans shed no light on the identity of the keeper. Some of the keepers of the lighthouse were Andrew Steiner, Harry Brewer, a man named Bailey of Pascagoula and Sam Maddox.

The biggest threat to the lighthouse reservation was reported to be vandals, rather than age or the elements (Cipra 1976:195) reported, "While the 60-foot tower still stands and the exterior looks very much as it has over the years, the interior has suffered by a fire which scorched the spiral steps. The once-substantial pier, the keeper’s and the assistant keeper’s dwelling houses, and a warehouse have been picked to pieces by vandals." In fact, the only remaining evidence of auxiliary structures are two brick cisterns and four of the five steel posts that once supported the keeper’s dwelling.

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