For more than a century, the lighthouse at Bayou St. John stood as both a navigational aid and a reflection of the changing fortunes of New Orleans’ inland waterways. From its beginnings in the early federal period to its gradual eclipse by modern transportation routes, the light evolved through repeated storms and the fluctuating significance of the bayou itself.

The strategic importance of Bayou St. John lay in its ancient role as the portage route linking Lake Pontchartrain to the Mississippi River. Indigenous peoples, French colonists, and later American authorities all recognized the value of this passage. By the early 1800s, the bayou had been deepened and improved, and vessels could sail from the lake into New Orleans via the Carondelet Canal. Yet the lake’s southern shoreline—flat, uninhabited, and lacking landmarks—offered few visual cues to guide mariners.

In 1808, local authorities urged the federal government to provide a light at the fort guarding the bayou entrance. Congress responded in 1810 with an appropriation of $2,000, and Treasury Secretary Albert Gallatin advised that the structure need be nothing more than a simple wooden frame with a hanging lantern. The lighthouse completed on August 5, 1811, was the first built by the United States outside the original thirteen states. Erected offshore atop an artificial shell island contained by timber pilings, the octagonal wooden tower rose modestly above the lake, showing a sperm-oil lamp twenty-eight feet over the water.

The first keeper was Lieutenant Sands, commander of Fort St. John, who received $15 per month for tending the light. After 1820, care of the station briefly fell to the local revenue cutter’s crew; in 1821, Pierre Brousseau became the first civilian keeper. The early lamp proved troublesome and was quickly replaced with a common street lamp from New Orleans. Complaints soon followed about the tower’s weakness and the poor visibility of its light; surveyors criticized the beacon as inferior even to ship lanterns visible through cabin ports. Yet despite its shortcomings, the lighthouse remained a familiar fixture at a shoreline increasingly used by bathers and excursionists.

By the 1830s, New Orleans maritime commerce was shifting toward purpose-built harbors on Lake Pontchartrain, including the New Canal and Port Pontchartrain (Milneburg). In 1837, Congress appropriated funds for a new lighthouse at the Bayou St. John entrance as well as for lights at New Canal and Port Pontchartrain. Site grants came from navigation companies operating the nearby canals and harbor works, and federal authorities planned three coordinated lights—one revolving, one deep red, and one pale red—to distinguish the different locations. The original Bayou St. John lighthouse was swept away in a storm in late 1837, prompting rapid construction of a replacement. Contracted in May 1838 and completed within a few months, the new tower displayed nine pale-red lamps at a height of forty-eight feet. Joseph Clement was appointed as its keeper in 1839.

When the Lighthouse Board assumed responsibility for American aids to navigation in 1852, the three lights on Lake Pontchartrain’s south shore were judged “wholly worthless.” Local superintendents agreed, describing the Bayou St. John structure as “shamefully built.” Despite major repairs in 1854—strengthening the frame, renewing weatherboarding, rehanging the door, repairing copperwork, and repainting the lantern—the tower’s deficiencies persisted. A new lighthouse, authorized at $6,000, was framed in 1855 but delayed by canal repairs. This new lighthouse consisted of a square dwelling resting on screwpiles and having a lantern room centered atop its hipped roof.

On August 11–12, 1860, a severe gale devastated Gulf Coast stations, entirely destroying the Bayou St. John and Proctorsville lighthouses. Though salvageable portions were stored, the outbreak of the Civil War halted reconstruction. During the federal occupation of New Orleans, the lantern room from Bayou St. John was shipped for use at Ship Island Lighthouse in Mississippi.

A makeshift wooden tripod light with a steamer’s lantern was exhibited at Bayou St. John beginning December 1, 1863, serving mariners through the war years. William Voss, who had been keeper of the light before the Civil War, returned to care for the beacon.

In 1867, the Lighthouse Board proposed rebuilding upon the original screw-pile foundation, a project funded and begun the next year. The rebuilt beacon was completed in March 1869, showing from a sixth-order lens thirty-nine feet above the lake. Unlike the earlier lighthouse, this beacon did not house its keeper. Rather, Robert Gage, who served from 1867 to 1895, had to cross a long embankment and decaying wharf, often at personal risk. His difficulties prompted renewed consideration of the station’s inadequacies. In 1871, the Board urged construction of a sturdier, higher screw-pile tower, emphasizing that hurricane surges on Lake Pontchartrain could reach prodigious heights driven by easterly winds and the lake’s broad fetch, but this work was not carried out.

During a storm on March 19, 1876, the pier leading to the lighthouse was washed away. Keeper Gage was at the light at the time and remained stranded there without food for at least thirty-six hours. The storm badly damaged the keeper’s dwelling, and a small wooden building was hastily erected as temporary accommodations for Keeper Gage. In May of that year, fire destroyed the platform and small storeroom at the base of the lighthouse.

In 1879, the schooner George Pandelley sank at the mouth of Bayou St. John. As the schooner was taking on water, Keeper Gage rowed out to it and succeeded in rescuing the captain and one man. Another man attempted to swim to the mainland but was carried away by the swell and drowned. The schooner was loaded with sand from the Tchefuncte River. Keeper Gage was born in Scotland and was in charge of Sand Island Lighthouse in Alabama before coming to Bayou St. John.

A new entrance cut by the Orleans Navigation Company in 1879 made the existing light poorly positioned for guiding vessels. Masters preferred the deeper, wider northern opening, and the Lighthouse Board recommended abolishing the old light in favor of two minor beacons marking both entrances.

Reports in 1880 described the keeper’s dwelling as uninhabitable, but because the canal charged tolls, the Lighthouse Board regarded the station as serving a largely private waterway. Only in 1882 was the old brick dwelling finally demolished and replaced with a two-story, three-gallery frame cottage. Improvements continued with new decking, fences, walks, and cisterns in subsequent years. The elevated walk to the lighthouse—at one point nearly a thousand feet long—was repeatedly rebuilt through the 1880s and 1890s.

The early twentieth century brought additional maintenance: new cisterns, rebuilt plank walks, an upgraded lens-lantern in 1903, and periodic repairs to outbuildings, platforms, and wharves. Yet by this time nearly all commercial navigation on Lake Pontchartrain had disappeared. Railroads to Mobile and the Mississippi Gulf Coast captured passenger and freight traffic, leaving only local craft and fishermen to make use of the bayou entrance.

Still, keepers remained on duty. The station was long served by Robert Gage and, after his death, by his widow Annie (1895–1906). Minnie E. Coteron, daughter of the Gages and the final keeper, maintained the light from 1906 until it was changed from oil to acetylene and automated in 1924. In April 1924, mariners were informed that the characteristic of the newly automated Bayou St. John Light, shown at a height of thirty-three feet from a white column, would be flashing red every three seconds instead of the former fixed red.

Keepers: Nathaniel Wilson (at least 1817), Pierre Brousseau (1821 – at least 1823), Daniel W. Whitney (at least 1825), Ambrose Chap (at least 1827 – at least 1833), Commanding Officer of Fort (at least 1835 – 1837), Joseph Clement (1839 – 1842), Robert Allen (1842 – 1849), Thomas H. Hall (1849 – 1851), Thomas S. Barry (1851 – 1853), William P. Smythe (1853), A.B. Shelby (1853 – 1857), Francis Duvernay (1857 – 1859), William Voss (1859 – 1860), William Voss (1863 – 1867), Robert Gage (1867 – 1895), Annie Gage (1895 – 1906), Minnie E. Coteron (1906 – 1924).

References:

1. Annual Report of the Lighthouse Board, various years.
2. Lighthouses, Lightships, and the Gulf of Mexico, David Cipra, 1997.

No light exists at this location today.

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