Mile 245 - Jupiter

As of January 3, 2008 at 7:00 PM
Steps: 580266
Miles: 247.01

The Jupiter Inlet, formed at the point where the Loxahatchee River flows into the Atlantic Ocean, is the only natural inlet on the East Coast of Florida. In 1852 the Florida Lighthouse Board recommended that a lighthouse be built near Jupiter Inlet due to the dangerous offshore shoal that claimed many shipwrecks over the years.

Conceived in 1851, the Jupiter Lighthouse was constructed in stages over the next eight years as the work started and stopped due to delivery problems and the Third Seminole War (1856-58). The tower is constructed of brick.

The chosen site was part of the Fort Jupiter reservation that was established during the First Seminole War in 1836. Major George G. Meade (remember him?) designed the tower.

The lighthouse at Jupiter was first illuminated on July 10, 1860. The light, a fixed white light varied by a brighter white flash every 90 seconds, was a product of then state-of-the-art first order Fresnel lens made by the Henry Lepante Company of Paris.

The final cost was $60,859.98, a substantial amount (naturally) over the original $35,000 budget approved by Congress in 1853.


The blue water, green palms, and white sandy beaches of Jupiter was first reached by the Jupiter and Lake Worth Railway, a short connection line between Lake Worth at Juno, Florida to Jupiter Inlet at Jupiter, Florida. With intermediate stops at Venus and Mars, the railroad was often called the Celestial Railroad.


The purpose of the railroad was to create a link to the Jupiter Inlet which was access by the Plant System steamboat lines.

The Plant System of railroads and steamboats was founded by Henry Bradley Plant, (October 27, 1819 - June 23, 1899), who was born in Branford, CT. Mr. Plant reconstructed and extended several small railroads so as to provide continuous service across the state of Florida, and by providing better connections to the North, he gave Florida orange growers quicker and cheaper access to Northern markets. Tampa, then a village of a few hundred inhabitants, was made the terminus of his southern Florida railroad and also the home port for a new line of steamships to Havana.

For the accommodation of winter visitors he built in Tampa, in the style of a Moorish palace, an enormous hotel costing $2,500,000. The subsequent growth in wealth and population of Florida and other states tributary to the Plant System made its founder one of the richest and most powerful men in the South.


The Celestial Railroad's most profitable period was also the cause of its decline. In 1893, our man, Henry Flagler tried to buy the line to use it to carry freight for his building of the resort of Palm Beach. Thinking the price was too high, Flagler instead decided to bring his own Florida East Coast Railroad line down west of the Celestial line, eventually driving the narrow-gauge railroad out of business. In the eight months before the FEC line bypassed Juno in February 1894, the Celestial Line took in an estimated $68,000 in freight charges for hauling materials for Flagler's railroad. By June of 1896, the Celestial rolling stock was history.