Old Cape Canaveral
Lighthouse

The Cape Canaveral Lighthouse, 1848 to today

The lighthouse the launches grew up around: 1848 brick tower, 1868 iron replacement, 1894 inland move, automated 1967, still operating in 2026.

By The Old Cape Canaveral Team
Cape Canaveral Lighthouse, iron tower painted in black and white bands, on the Space Force Station.
The 1894 iron tower at its current inland site, where it has stood since being moved off the eroding shoreline. US Coast Guard via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

The Cape Canaveral Lighthouse has stood at the cape since 1848. Three structures, two relocations, one continuous mission. The 65-foot brick tower built in 1848 was the original. Confederate forces dismantled the lens at the start of the Civil War. The US Lighthouse Board replaced the brick with a 145-foot iron tower in 1868. Atlantic erosion threatened the iron tower by 1893, so the Light-House Board moved it 1.25 miles inland in 1894. The Coast Guard automated the light in 1967. It still operates as an active aid to navigation in 2026, the only lighthouse located on an active US military launch range.

Cape Canaveral Lighthouse photographed in the 1890s, both the original brick tower and the 1868 iron replacement visible.
The cape lighthouse in the 1890s, around the time of the inland move. The 145-foot iron tower replaced the 1848 brick lighthouse, which was inadequate for the offshore shoals. Photo: Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. Pre-1928.

The 1848 brick tower

Winslow Lewis built the original 65-foot brick lighthouse for $12,724 under an 1847 congressional appropriation. The light became operational on May 10, 1848, with 15 lamps and 21-inch reflectors. Mariners complained almost immediately. The light’s range was too short for the offshore shoals that wreck ships off the cape, the Halifax and Indian River sailors said, and a higher tower would save more lives.

The 1850 census recorded Mills Olcott Burnham as the keeper. Burnham held the post for 36 years, until his death in 1886, the longest run of any keeper in the lighthouse’s history. He raised seven children at the station and farmed the surrounding scrubland.

Civil War dismantling and the 1868 iron tower

The Confederate States removed the lens and lighting apparatus on March 31, 1861, days after Florida seceded. They buried the components in an orange grove near the keeper’s quarters. After the war, the apparatus was recovered, but the wooden brick tower was deemed inadequate. Congress appropriated $50,000 in 1867 for a taller iron-plate replacement.

The new 145-foot tower opened on May 10, 1868, exactly 20 years after the original. It was built using cast iron plates manufactured in the North and shipped to the cape. The first-order Fresnel lens, manufactured by Henry-Lepaute in Paris, threw a fixed white light 18 nautical miles. The same lens, restored, is now displayed at the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse Museum about 80 miles north.

The 1894 inland move

By the late 1880s, the Atlantic was actively eating the dune the lighthouse stood on. The shoreline had moved more than 200 feet west since the tower was built. The Light-House Board concluded in 1892 that the tower would be undermined within a decade if not moved.

The relocation began in 1893. Workers disassembled the iron plates one course at a time, transported them by mule-drawn tramway to a new site 1.25 miles inland, and reassembled the tower on a new brick foundation. The work cost $76,500 and took 18 months. The lamp was re-lit at the new location on July 25, 1894.

The site they chose is now inside the boundary of Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, near Launch Complex 31. It was empty scrub when they picked it. By 1962, it would sit a few hundred yards from rockets.

Cape Canaveral Light Station in 1910, including keeper structures.
The light station in 1910, a working keeper's facility. The Coast Guard automated the light in 1967 and the last keeper left the station that year. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. Pre-1928.

Automation, 1967

Through the first half of the 20th century, the cape lighthouse remained a manned station. Keepers worked rotating shifts, maintained the lens, and operated a fog signal. The Coast Guard had taken over operation from the Lighthouse Service in 1939 when the Lighthouse Service was abolished and absorbed into the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard installed a DCB-224 rotating beacon in 1967, removed the Fresnel lens, and automated the station. The last keeper left that year. The DCB-224 was replaced in 1993 with a VRB-25 lamp, which is still in service.

The light is officially designated as USCG light list number 25,830. It flashes white every 20 seconds and is visible 24 nautical miles.

The 2007-2008 restoration

By the early 2000s, decades of salt air had eaten into the iron plates. The Lighthouse Foundation, formed in 2002, pushed for a full restoration. The Coast Guard transferred the lighthouse to the Air Force in 2000 under a National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act conveyance, with the Air Force taking over maintenance.

The 2007-2008 restoration sandblasted the tower down to bare metal, replaced 12 corroded iron plates, and repainted in the original 1894 black-and-white daymark pattern. The work cost about $1.4 million, funded jointly by the Air Force and the Lighthouse Foundation.

The lighthouse now

The Cape Canaveral Lighthouse is the only lighthouse inside an active US military launch range. Public access is restricted. The Lighthouse Foundation runs occasional tours by reservation, escorted by the 45th Space Wing security. The tours sell out within hours of being announced.

It is also the lighthouse whose footprint best frames every Falcon 9 launch from LC-40 and every Atlas V from LC-41. Time-lapse photographers position cameras to catch the rocket exhaust passing behind or beside the tower. The result is a recurring tableau: a 1894 iron lighthouse and a 21st-century launch vehicle in one frame.

That juxtaposition is the cape in a single image. The light came first. The rockets joined it. Both are still working.