The Sands of Time: A Yarn from the Mouth of Mobile Bay

Planted on a sandy outcrop at Mobile Bay's edge, the old Sand Island Light has seen more thrills than a cat's got whiskers. Winslow Lewis, the crafty chap, put pen to paper in 1837, birthing a 55-foot titan with a 14-lamp spectacle. But Winslow's design left even the saltiest sailors aground more often than not. A new act, the Argand-style, took over, but it didn't make it to the final curtain. They say the curtain fell during the Civil War in 1863.

The poor outcrop's future looked grim as a ghost town. A new marquee, a 132-foot giant with a 171-piling, concrete foundation, played its part in 1864, standing tall for a hundred years before Hurricane Isaac took its turn in 2012. Just a few years after a multi-million renovation, it's on the Lighthouse Digest Doomsday List now. But with renovation or not, the old Light remains, a decommissioned performance, echoing nature's tenacity and history's capriciousness.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons