Following the opening of the district to free settlement in February 1842, a quarantine station was formed in 1844 at Dunwich, on Stradbroke Island, at the site of a former goods transfer depot established by convicts in the late 1820s.

In August 1857, surveyor James Warner completed a preliminary survey of a site for a village, which was approved in November 1858, and in December 1858 tenders were called for the construction of a Customs Station nearby on the river.

[citation needed] In February 1859 Warner officially surveyed sections 1 to 13 of the village of Lytton, as well as sites for a customs landing place and a signal station.

Following separation from New South Wales in December 1859, the Queensland government maintained Lytton's role as the customs entry to the Port of Moreton Bay.

The Sub-inspector of the Water Police, based at the Lytton Customs Reserve, was also appointed as a health officer, and inspected all vessels entering the port.

[1] Sir George Bowen, on completion of his term as Governor and departure from Moreton Bay on 4 January 1868, officially named and designated Lytton as Brisbane's port.

By May 1890 builders John Petrie & Son had completed a cottage, stables and forage room on the Lytton Quarantine Reserve, and in 1893, dog kennels were constructed.

In 1910 Dr John Simeon Colebrook Elkington was appointed to this position, and in the following three years established Queensland's public health infrastructure, and oversaw the administration and implementation of State and Commonwealth quarantine practices.

In December 1913, Elkington resigned his State position and joined the Commonwealth Health Service in Brisbane, overseeing the establishment of the quarantine facility at Lytton.

[1] The establishment of a human quarantine station at Lytton was made practicable following the widening and deepening of the channel through the bar at the mouth of the Brisbane River, completed in 1911.

It is possible that some of the buildings associated with the isolation hospital established at Colmslie in the early 1900s were relocated to the Lytton Quarantine Reserve at this time.

[1] The quarantine station buildings were timber-framed and timber-clad with corrugated iron roofs and elevated on low concrete stumps.

The fort also played a role in the function of the quarantine station, controlling ships attempting to enter the Brisbane River without appropriate health clearances.

In 1919 the world-wide outbreak of Spanish Influenza which followed the end of the First World War was delayed in Brisbane by some three months, following a strict quarantine at Lytton of personnel returning on troop ships.

[1] During Elkington's era, a venereal diseases hospital was established on the southern portion of the Lytton Quarantine Reserve, adjacent to South Street.

The building currently used by the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service as the administration centre for Fort Lytton, was relocated c. 1982 from elsewhere on the former quarantine station reserve, where it once functioned as the doctor's quarters.

This does not in any way detract from the significance of the remainder of the site, which remains important for its association with early land use in the Lytton district from at least the 1850s, for its association with the human quarantine facility established at Lytton in the early 20th century, for its potential to reveal archaeological evidence, and for contributing to the sense of isolation which was characteristic of the quarantine facility established here in the 1910s.

It has a corrugated iron roof and a verandah at the north end of the building which is constructed over tramway tracks that once linked the quarantine complex to the jetty to the west.

[1] The tram/trolley bridge foundations comprise pairs of steel reinforced concrete footings set 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) apart, leading west from the Reception House toward the jetty.

[1] The bath house is a large, rectangular, timber-framed, building with weatherboard-cladding to above sill height, above which is fibrous-cement sheeting and battening.

remains, but the original interior layout is still discernible and the upper level observation post, at the north end of the building, is intact.

[1] The fuel shed is a small, later, timber-framed, weatherboard-clad structure with a low-pitched corrugated iron roof, adjacent to the eastern end of the boiler room.

[1] The disinfecting block is a large, rectangular, timber-framed, building with weatherboard-cladding to above sill height, above which is fibrous-cement sheeting and battening.

It is of concrete construction, and has a central rectangular wire mesh cage filled with coarse rubble which possibly functioned as primary filtration of effluent.

[1] Apart from the relocation of the former Doctor's Quarters to the northwestern end of the site, the surviving buildings and other structural and archaeological elements maintain their original spatial relationship.

The surrounding grounds are mostly grassed, with a new bitumen road, which leads to the present entrance to Fort Lytton, established west of the original metalled roadway into the quarantine station.

The place is also significant historically as part of a continuum of sites in and adjacent to Moreton Bay used for human quarantine purposes from 1844 to 1982.

While only some of the Lytton buildings remain, the site still provides important, rare surviving evidence of early 20th century Australian quarantine stations.

The surviving quarantine buildings, being substantially intact and mostly in situ, are important in illustrating the principal characteristics of an early 20th century Australian marine quarantine station, including the isolated location, building types (materials, forms, design, aesthetics, coherency and functions), spatial arrangements and grounds layout, and provision of services.

The place has a special association with the work of Dr JSC Elkington, who was responsible for the design and development of Queensland's early 20th century public health infrastructure, and who became an authority on quarantine practice in post-Federation Australia.