Located closer to the land are the Chester, Bull and Southeast shoals, which are about 4.5 to 7.5 nautical miles (8.3 to 13.9 km; 5.2 to 8.6 mi) off the coast of the cape.

[5] Along with his position, Burnham was given 160 acres (65 ha) of land as part of the Florida Armed Occupation Act of 1842, a legislation passed to populate the state.

[11] Sailors heavily criticized the white brick lighthouse with complaints that the light was too weak and too low to be seen before ships were on the reefs near the cape.

The lamps and mechanism of the lighthouse were removed from the tower by Burnham and buried in his orange grove to protect them from Federal raids.

The chosen replacement tower was made with cast iron plate designed so that it can be disassembled and moved to a new location at a minimal cost, in case the encroaching sea started threatening the lighthouse.

The new all-white lighthouse tower was completed in 1868, receiving a first-order Fresnel lens made by Henry-Lepaute and Company of Paris, France that was first lit on May 10, 1868.

[10] A temporary 55-foot (17 m) square black skeletal pyramidal lighthouse was erected to keep that section of the sea lit during the move.

The cast iron tower was dismantled, moved by a tram pulled by mules, and reassembled at the new location about a mile westward together with the keepers' houses.

[8] William H. Peck wrote about his meeting with lighthouse keeper Mills Burnham of Cape Canaveral in the Florida Star newspaper in 1887.

President Harry S. Truman signed the legislation titled Public Law 60 on May 11, 1949, that established Cape Canaveral as the Joint Long Range Proving Ground, a site for missile testing by the military.

After it was discovered that strong vibrations that accompany launches were loosening the prisms of the first-order Fresnel lens, it was finally removed in 1993 and sent to the lighthouse museum of the Ponce de Leon Inlet Light for restoration and display.

[1] The original copper lantern was also replaced with a galvanized steel lantern and was made into a lighthouse gazebo at the grounds of the Air Force Space and Missile Museum at Launch Complex 26 inside the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The displaced galvanized steel lantern took its place at the lighthouse gazebo leaving just the original copper vent ball on its top.

[18] Ground sample tests taken in 2008 showed a very high level of lead in the soil around the tower, and visitors were kept 50 yards (46 m) away from the lighthouse for some time.