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Thursday, July 15, 2010
The Lighthouse has moved!
After a few months of work out on Round Island, the lighthouse base has now come ashore. Here are a few pictures. More pictures and video to come soon. Right now they can be found on the City of Pascagoula's Facebook page.
In late 2009, the City of Pascagoula, Mississippi received permission from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to move the base of Round Island Lighthouse from Round Island to the mainland where it will be restored in the city's downtown district near the US 90 high-rise bridge over the Pascagoula River. The 1859 lighthouse was toppled by Hurricane Georges in the late 1990s and further damaged by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Pieces of the tower have been stored in a warehouse for most of the decade since the structure fell. The city will use a $250,000 Community Heritage grant it received along with $340,000 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to help fund the project.
The first phase of the project was to recover the lighthouse remains. That step is complete and the recovered historic material is in secure storage.
The next phase is to remove the base of the lighthouse from Round Island and prepare it from transport to the mainland. Once the site work is complete at the new location, next to the Highway 90 high-rise bridge, the base will be set in place. The site will connect to the Pascagoula Historic Pathway, a two long walking path which will begin construction in Summer 2010. This portion of the project is fully funded.
The final phase will be to rebuild the tower using primarily salvaged bricks and re-light the original lens. We are currently raising funds for this portion of the project through grants and private and commercial sponsorships.
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