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  Just sit right back and you'll hear the tale
the tale of a fateful storm,
That made land fall, and lighthouse fall,
And many sailors mourn.

The Round Island Lighthouse Preservation Society was founded when a Pascagoula City Council member, Sarah Jim Boykin, mentioned in a newspaper article that she was looking for some support from the community to restore the Round Island Lighthouse and published a phone number (brave woman!).  At the time, the Lighthouse was only threatened by an encroaching sea.

She was astounded by the response she received.  It took several weeks but eventually a meeting was scheduled to follow a regular Pascagoula City Council meeting, and the momentum started growing from there.  We had a local Engineering firm volunteering their services, we solicited donations of rip rap, and trucking to haul it, we had a plan and were moving ahead.  And then, Hurricane Georges formed in the Atlantic, raced across the Caribbean and the Keys and made landfall at Biloxi, Mississippi, just west of Pascagoula.

The Lighthouse and Pascagoula were on the "bad" side of The Hurricane, with the strongest winds and highest storm surge.  No one saw it happen, but it's believed that as the winds and seas rose, rushing north past and swirling round the Lighthouse on their way into many of our yards and houses, it eroded out the sand and soil on the north side of the Lighthouse, undermining its foundation.  As material was removed, the foundation began to tilt, slowly at first, toward the gaping hole the swirling seas were excavating.   At some point, as it leaned to the north, with wind howling and spray flying through he dark night, it reached the breaking point and gave way.

In the next days, when the storm had finally blown itself out and seas were calm and safe again, the dome was discovered resting in the sea just north of the Lighthouse, top down in the hole in the sand.  The jagged, broken base of the Lighthouse was tilted and resting on its edge.  The beach was strewn with the historic fabric that had been the walls and skin of the Lighthouse, as well as the rock and reeds and refuse the seas had thrown up and left as the water receded.  And items that had been buried under the sand were exposed for the first time in a century.   

Suddenly, our mission changed.  We looked at the pictures, we talked about the pros and cons, and we voted at that first meeting following The Hurricane to restore the Lighthouse to all its former glory. Then, along came Hurricane Katrina, destroying most of what had been re-constructed following Georges. The lighthouse waited on the back burner from the fall of 2005 to the summer of 2008, when the Round Island Lighthouse Preservation Society received approval from the Pascagoula City Council to use a FEMA grant to determine the most suitable new location, on land, for the lighthouse. (Click here for an update).

This site provides some information on the history, the memories and the charms of the Round Island Lighthouse.  Hopefully you'll be inspired to lend a hand.  If you are interested in seeing what you could do to make a difference, take a peek at the You CAN Help page for products and membership information.  Even if you're not inspired yet, browse through the site and let us know what you think

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