Year first constructed 1885 Deactivated 1967 removed lantern Address Mobile, AL 36601, USA Opened 1885 Phone +1 334-230-2668 | Automated 1935 Foundation screw piles Height 12 m Focal height 15 m | |
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Location Middle of Mobile Bay, Mobile Bay, Alabama Similar Sand Island Light, Freedom Rides Museum, Fendall Hall, Belle Mont, Old Cahawba Archaeol | ||
Middle bay lighthouse damaged by shrimp boat
Middle Bay Light, also known as Middle Bay Lighthouse and Mobile Bay Lighthouse, is a hexagonal-shaped cottage style screw-pile lighthouse offshore from Mobile, Alabama, in the center of Mobile Bay.
Contents
Middle bay lighthouse
History
The station was activated in 1885. In 1916 the keeper's wife gave birth to a baby that summer at the station. According to the Alabama Lighthouse Association web site, the keeper brought a dairy cow to the station and corralled it on a section of the lower deck because his wife was unable to nurse the newborn baby. All had to be evacuated when the station survived but was damaged by a hurricane that year. The light was automated in 1935.
Middle Bay Light was deactivated in 1967. The lighthouse was placed on National Register of Historic Places on December 30, 1974. In 1984 the lighthouse was stabilized by Middle Bay Light Centennial Commission in preparation for the centennial celebration. In 1996 the Coast Guard loaned the original Fresnel lens to the Ft. Morgan Museum for public display. In 2002 restoration efforts were begun to repair the lighthouse.
In 2003, a real-time weather station was added to the lighthouse by the Dauphin Island Sea Lab and the Mobile Bay National Estuary Program. Still running, the weather station, one of seven in Mobile Bay, samples precipitation, total and quantum solar radiation, air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, water temperature, salinity, water depth, and dissolved oxygen. These data can be seen in real-time at www.mymobilebay.com. From late 2011 - mid 2014 currents and waves were also displayed.
Light
Whale oil was the first fuel used and the lighthouse tenders worked in shifts making sure that the lamps did not go out and smoke the lens. In later years kerosene was used and eventually they were converted to electricity.