The United States of America is a federal union of 50 states and a capital district. The state of Mississippi is in the southeast, located on the east bank of the Mississippi River. Spain gave up its claims to most of the area in a 1795 treaty and the U.S. forcibly annexed the coastal region in 1812. Mississippi was organized as a territory in 1798 and admitted as a state of the Union in 1817. Mississippi has a short coastline facing the Gulf of Mexico northeast of New Orleans, Louisiana. The state's coast is low and sandy, with a partial fringe of barrier islands offshore. Pascagoula is the most important port on the coast. On 29 August 2005 Hurricane Katrina devastated the coastline of Mississippi with one of the highest storm surges on record. The Biloxi lighthouse withstood the storm, as it has so many others, but there was significant damage to its interior brick lining. The Ship Island lighthouse replica was destroyed. The Round Island Light, which had been under restoration after being overturned by Hurricane Georges in 1998, was overturned a second time. This left Mississippi with only a single standing historic lighthouse. Since this disaster, the Round Island Light has been rebuilt at an onshore site in Pascagoula and Gulfport has built a marina lighthouse inspired by the Ship Island Light. Navigational aids in the United States are operated by the U.S. Coast Guard, but ownership (and sometimes operation) of historic lighthouses has been transferred to local authorities and preservation organizations in many cases. Mississippi lights are the responsibility of the Coast Guard's Sector Mobile based in Mobile, Alabama ARLHS numbers are from the ARLHS World List of Lights. Admiralty numbers are from volume J of the Admiralty List of Lights & Fog Signals. USCG numbers are from Volume IV of the U.S. Coast Guard Light List.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Information available on lost lighthouses:
Notable faux lighthouses:
Adjoining pages: North: Tennessee | East: Alabama | West: Louisiana
Return to the Lighthouse Directory index
Checked and revised October 10, 2024. Lighthouses: 18. Site copyright 2024 Russ Rowlett and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.