Cape Florida Light

The Cape Florida Light is a lighthouse on Cape Florida at the south end of Key Biscayne in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Constructed in 1825, it guided mariners off the Florida Reef, which starts near Key Biscayne and extends southward a few miles offshore of the Florida Keys. It was operated by staff, with interruptions, until 1878, when it was replaced by the Fowey Rocks lighthouse. The lighthouse was put back into use in 1978 by the U.S. Coast Guard to mark the Florida Channel, the deepest natural channel into Biscayne Bay. They decommissioned it in 1990.

Within the Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park since 1966, the lighthouse was relit in 1996. It is owned and operated by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

Before the Lighthouse was built, the Cape Florida Light was one of the places where slaves and Black Seminoles boarded ships for the Bahamas. This was known as the Saltwater Railroad, a migration that began when Spain transferred its Florida territory to the United States. Under the Spanish, many blacks were free, a right they feared would end under American rule.

Spanish Florida had been a slave refuge until President Andrew Jackson, a strong supporter of slavery, invaded in 1818. When the Americans took over in 1819, the Adam-Onis Treaty prompted hundreds of blacks to begin migrating to the British-held Bahamas. This was the beginning of a decade's long movement. Enslaved people in the south had limited options for escape, northern states and British Canada, where slavery was either abolished or restricted by the 1820s. This made the Bahamas a much more viable option for those in Florida as the nearest island was 154-miles away.

During the early 1820s an estimated 300 Black Seminoles found passage from Key Biscayne to Andros Island in the Bahamas on seagoing canoes and Bahamian boats. In 1820 one traveler reported seeing 60 "Indians", 60 "runaway slaves", and 27 boats of Bahamian wreckers preparing to leave Cape Florida. When construction began in 1825 on the lighthouse the Saltwater Railroad was compromised by the bright light. While the lighthouse was helpful to sailors offshore it proved a setback to those seeking to escape Florida at night. Although Cape Florida was less suitable as a departure point after the lighthouse was built, the Bahamas remained a haven for escaping slaves.

The Park carries a special significance as a designated National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Site. One of Only two parks in Florida to hold that Distinction. The other is Fort Jefferson in Dry Tortugas.

The construction contract called for a 65-foot-tall (20 m) tower with walls of solid brick, five feet thick at the bottom tapering to two feet thick at the top. It was later found that the contractor had scrimped on materials and built hollow walls. The first keeper of the lighthouse was Captain John Dubose, who served for more than ten years. In 1835 a major hurricane struck the island, damaging the lighthouse and the keeper's house, and flooding the island under three feet of water.

When the Second Seminole War started in 1835, the Seminoles attacked the few European-American settlers in southern Florida. In January 1836 the Seminoles massacred the family of William Cooley at their coontie plantation on the New River, in what is now Fort Lauderdale.