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Photo courtesy of
the National Park Service.
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The 1748 wreck of HMS Fowey gave name to Fowey Rocks, the northernmost of Florida's reefs, off Key Biscayne near Miami. New York and Delaware firms manufactured the Fowey Rocks Lighthouse, and the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition showed off its first-order Fresnel lens and upper tower two years before they were installed on the reef. Soldier Key, four miles west of the site, provided a base for construction of the cast-iron pile structure, which survived Hurricane Andrew's almost direct hit with minimum damage. The Coast Guard automated the lighthouse in 1972, the last of the Florida Reef lights to be automated. The lighthouse, which lies within Biscayne National Park, is not open to the public, but it can be seen on clear days from the Cape Florida Lighthouse on the southern tip of Key Biscayne.
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