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Florida’s Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse Station now has a new exhibit entitled Lighthouses for Airplanes: the United States Lighthouse Service Airways Division.
In the days before radio and modern navigation equipment it was the Lighthouse Service that lit up the airways with specially built towers to light the way for pilots flying at night and to light up the airstrips that they used.
One of the least reported or written about history of the United States Lighthouse Service is its Airways Division. Although, I include a segment in every lecture that I present, and we have touched briefly on it over the years, the last major article we published about the Airways Division was in the August 1998 edition. So, it’s great to see that that the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse in Ponce Inlet, Florida has taken the initiative with this exhibit.
The new exhibit traces the evolution of aviation beacons from Fresnel lenses used at lighthouses and features an outstanding example of an early landing-field floodlight as well as a variety of other related beacons. For more
information you can call them at 386-761-1821.
This story appeared in the
March 2010 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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