Lighthouse at Anclote Key State Park

historic lighthouse restoration

We recently did quite a bit of work on a historic lighthouse on Anclote Key on the west coast of Florida. Below are some photos that show the Lighthouse from a distance with the new color and the work being completed in the Lens Room of the Lighthouse. We are also touching up the orange on the outside, priming the inside of the stairwell and painting the finish coat in the Lens Room.

The Anclote Key Lighthouse is a 110 ft high cast iron skeletal square pyramidal tower that sits on the southern tip of Anclote Key in the Gulf of Mexico, three miles offshore from Tarpon Springs and the mouth of the Anclote River. Originally built in 1887, it remained in use until the 1980s.

The tower’s lantern room is supported by a central cylinder, which houses a spiral staircase and four supporting columns, slope outward to form a square, pyramidal structure. Four levels of horizontal braces connect the central cylinder to the supporting columns.

The intent of the restoration efforts is a full spectrum of work to repair and replace some architectural and structural elements, along with recoating the lighthouse. This also includes a repair on the oil house that was damaged due to vandalism.

The work started by assembling scaffolding completely around the lighthouse. The second step was to power wash the entire structure to remove all the flaking rust and paint as well as areas where the coatings had failed. After the power washing, the crew started the removal of all the remaining rust and coating failures. After that, spot priming took place in areas of rust and where coating failed. Likewise to the exterior, the same was done for the interior of the lighthouse.

Once all the rust and coating failures had been grinded and spot primed, painting the finish coat on structure took place. This can be seen by the new orange-red color of the lighthouse.

Along with the coating for the lighthouse, the lighthouse needed replacements for several of its structural elements that had a 10% or greater loss of the cross-sectional area. This included work on the doors and windows, 30 eye bolt replacements, 10 tie rod replacements, 10 turn buckle replacements, 20 pins, 40 of the bolts, 18 vertical guardrail rods and sealing of the concrete slab.

Joseph Fuller

Project Coordinator

Location: Anclote Keys, Island in Pasco County, Florida