Amelia Island Light

After Congress funded the move in 1838, the Cumberland Island Lighthouse was dismantled brick by brick, shipped across the river, and rebuilt on Amelia Island, first lit in 1839 as the oldest surviving lighthouse in Florida. Amos Latham, a Revolutionary War veteran who'd kept the original Cumberland Island light, followed the tower across the river and served as its first keeper on Amelia Island, with his wife Jane as assistant keeper, until his death in 1842. Local legend, not independently documented, tells of a later caretaker and his young bride, said to have died tragically before he took his own life at the top of the tower. Visitors describe a putrid smell, a radio that turns on every night on its own, and a door that won't stay locked no matter how often it's secured.