Tybee Island Lighthouse, Georgia

Climbing 178 steps with a toddler on your hip isn’t likely the most popular way to exercise. But completing the climb in Georgia’s oldest and tallest lighthouse was worth the extra expenditure of calories to drink in the view from above – further cementing my desire to justify how a drone would complement my professional work. Tybee Island, Georgia, some 15 miles east of Savannah, and stretching 2.75 miles long, is not only a playground for thousands of visitors each year, but is home to the Tybee Lighthouse and the turn-of-the-century Fort Screven.

The orderly arrangement of supporting structures at Tybee Light: the head keepers cottage is at top center, the 1st assistant keepers cottage is at bottom left, along with the summer kitchen and at far left, the garage – while at right is the 2nd assistant keepers cottage.

I’m used to seeing lighthouses, stark and solitary on their sandy sites, usually without their ancillary buildings. Tybee Lighthouse holds on its five acres the head keepers cottage, the assistant keepers cottages (first and second assistant keepers), a summer kitchen, fuel storage building, and garage. All of the buildings save the garage date to the 19th century.

The 1812 summer kitchen.

There’s been a lighthouse on the island since around 1735-36, a 90-foot high structure of “brickwork and cedar piles.” A storm, however, took out this lighthouse in 1741. The following year, the second version, built in 10 months by Thomas Sumner, rose up to mark the entrance to the Savannah Rive from  the Atlantic and Calibogue Sound.

The lighthouse circa 1980, from the National Register of Historic Places photo files, taken by James R. Lockhart with the Georgia DNR.

By 1791, a third lighthouse, all brick, was built further inland from its predecessors. Records from the 1830s note that the overall height of the structure was 90 feet. The lighthouse was partially destroyed by Confederate troops during the Civil War, but according to local lore, the bottom 60 feet remained and formed the bottom of an additional 85 feet when the light was rebuilt in 1867.

The lighthouse with the 1st assistant keepers cottage and the summer kitchen at right.

Not long after the current keepers cottages were built in the 1870s/1880s, the Army Corps of Engineers began planning a coastal defense complex to protect the entrance to the port of Savannah. Construction on the 205-acre site, which included the five-acre Tybee Lighthouse complex, began in 1897.

The second assistant keepers cottage.

Fort Screven consists of six poured concrete batteries – the coastal artillery associated with the gun emplacements was removed during World War II and melted down for scrap. For military buffs, Fort Screven is also significant for its 1932-33 Post commander – General George C. Marshall (who was just a Lt. Colonel at the time).

The coastal defense elements are only a small part of the Post – though the batteries are stark and forbidding, the housing, support, and services facilities at the Fort “were planned to reflect their location in a seaside resort area.”

The Head Keepers Cottage.

This means that the architecture of these buildings reflect reflect local building traditions – houses raised off  the ground with brick foundations and piers, with lots of porches and galleries to catch the sea breezes. It’s a lovely area today, and one I wish I’d been able to wander around more (but a toddler’s attention span is only so long).

The batteries at Fort Screven.

Although I cherish a vacation at the beach for the ability to relax in a setting completely unlike my normal environment, I am also always excited to discover new historic sites – and this section of Tybee Island is fascinating and beautiful.

Tybee Lighthouse was converted to electricity in 1933, and the last keeper, George B. Jackson, died in 1948. Fort Screven was deactivated in 1946. Preservation efforts began in the 1960s at both the Fort and the lighthouse, and today’s visitors benefit from the hard work of residents decades ago.