St. George Lighthouse Association

"St. George Island - More than a Beautiful Beach" is the theme of a new video in production to promote the island on websites and networking media.  Kayaking, Stand-Up Paddleboarding, Boating, Fishing, Camping, Bicycling, Birding, Photography  and Vacationing with your Pet are some of the island's special activities featured in the video.

Volunteers who help operate the St. George Island Visitor Center & Lighthouse Museum visited several new facilties and learned about some new services at the SGI State Park during the summer volunteer event on August 19.  The quarterly events are intended to thank volunteers for their service and to introduce them to new amenities so that they can share the information with our visitors.

The Cape St. George Light is proving to be a romantic venue for weddings and proposals!  Most recently, Erin Bailey and Fred Babb were married in front of the historic lighthouse on Saturday, August 14.

The St. George Island Visitor Center and Lighthouse for the first time had a display booth at the annual Scallop Festival in Port St. Joe.  Visitor Center Executive Director Elaine Rosenthal and SGLA Secretary Terry Kemp talked with hundreds of festival-goers about St. George Island and the lighthouse.

The 2010 Annual Meeting of the St. George Lighthouse Association brought more than 40 members to St. George Lighthouse Park on Saturday, May 22 to enjoy a hotdog cook-out and to get up-to-date information on the Lighthouse, Keeper's House, and Visitor Center.  The membership also elected officers for the coming year.

Visual and performing artists at the 2010 QuickDraw filled St. George Lighthouse Park with music and cheer on Saturday, May 8, and for a short time county residents were able to take a break from ongoing preparations to deal with the possible impact of the Gulf oil spill.

More than 400 lighthouse enthusiasts from all over the U.S. participated in the first Forgotten Coast Lighthouse Challenge on April 24 and 25 .  The four lighthouses participating in the Challenge were Cape San Blas Lighthouse, Cape St. George Light, Crooked River Lighthouse, and St. Marks Lighthouse.

The two fireplaces on the first floor of the Keeper's House are being constructed of original lighthouse bricks left over from the construction of the Cape St. George Light. The west fireplace is complete, and the east fireplace is almost finished.

The fireplaces will not be working fireplaces, but add a historical dimension to the replica of what was once the Keeper's House and then became the Assistant Keeper's House when the light stood on Little St. George Island.

The sense of deja vu was overwhelming when a team from the Round Island Lighthouse in Pascagoula, Mississippi, visited the Cape St. George Light on February 17, 2010.

Several Pascagoula city officials, an engineer, and two volunteers drove six hours from the coastal Mississippi city to talk with members of the St. George Lighthouse Association about the reconstruction of their lighthouse, which bears an eerie similarity to our own story.

Contractors completed the addition of the Keepers House porch roof, which now awaits roof shingles.  Volunteers began the addition of pickets to the porch railing, completing the east side on Saturday, April 10.

Roofers completed the roof on the Keeper's House this week, and it looks great! Although the shingles are asphalt, they are a special triple-laminate design made to look like shake shingles. Shakes, which were on the roofs of both keeper's dwellings originally, are no longer practical or cost-effective in this environment.

Brick masons finished the back side of the Lighthouse Keeper's House and have moved the scaffolding around to the front. The brick looks so good that the SGLA Board of Directors voted not to paint the brick white at this time, leaving the door open for a possible paint job in the future.