New caretaker sought for venerable South Florida lighthouse

Andres Viglucci -

Wanna buy a lighthouse ? Here's your chance.

The U.S. government has put the picturesque, 133-year-old Fowey Rocks Light up for adoption. The price is right: Free.

Sure, there's a catch or two. You must run a nonprofit group or local government and prove you can preserve and maintain the historic lighthouse for public use.

And you need a good boat. The Fowey Rocks Light sits on a shallow reef out in the ocean some seven miles southeast of the tip of Key Biscayne.

But for lighthouse fanciers — and there are more of them than you think — the government's decision to divest itself of Fowey Rocks represents a long-awaited opportunity.

Leaders of the Florida Keys Reef Lights Foundation have been trying for 10 years to enable public access to six offshore beacons strung between Key Biscayne and Key West, and they say they will immediately apply to become Fowey Rocks' new owners.

"We would really like people to come out there and be able to climb up the lighthouse,'' said foundation president Eric S. Martin. "We like to climb. We like the view from the top.''

Fowey Rocks, still a working light, is the northern-most of the six Keys beacons, and though not the oldest — that distinction belongs to the 1852 Carysfort Reef Light off Key Largo — it's architecturally perhaps the finest.

From a distance its cast-iron skeleton resembles an oil derrick, but an up-close view reveals its charms: Suspended on a platform amid the 110-foot tower is an octagonal, two-story Victorian keeper's house with a Mansard roof. An iron funnel containing a staircase rises from the house to the light, which is topped by a cupola and solar panels to power the automated beacon.

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