However, both the Spanish and the British governments[3] operated a major aid to navigation here including a series of wooden watch towers and beacons dating from 1565.

The non profit mission is to "discover, preserve, present and keep alive the stories of the nation's oldest port[5] as symbolized by our working St. Augustine Lighthouse."

According to some archival records and maps, this "official" American lighthouse was placed on the site of an earlier watchtower built by the Spanish as early as the late 16th century.

Swiss-Canadian engineer and marine surveyor Joseph Frederick Wallet DesBarres marks a coquina "Light House" on Anastasia Island in his 1780 engraving, "A Plan of the Harbour of St. Augustin".

Multiple lamps with silver reflectors were replaced by a fourth order Fresnel lens in 1855, greatly improving the lighthouse's range and eliminating some maintenance issues.

At the beginning of the Civil War, future mayor Paul Arnau, a local Menorcan harbor master, along with the lightkeeper, a woman named Maria Mestre de los Dolores Andreu (who, in this role, became the first Hispanic-American woman to serve in the Coast Guard),[7] removed the lens from the old lighthouse and hid it, in order to block Union shipping lanes as well as to help blockade runners remain hidden.

During World War II, Coast Guard men and women trained in St. Augustine, and used the lighthouse as a lookout post for enemy ships and submarines which frequented the coastline.

In 1980, a small group of 15 women in the Junior Service League of St. Augustine (JSL) signed a 99-year lease with the county for the keeper's house and surrounding grounds and began a massive restoration project.

Today, the St. Augustine Light Station consists of the 165-foot (50 m) 1874 tower, the 1876 Keepers' House, two summer kitchens added in 1886, a 1941 U.S. Coast Guard barracks and a 1936 garage that was home to a jeep repair facility during World War II.

LAMP is one of the few research organizations in the nation employing full-time professional marine archaeologists and conservators that is not a part of a university or government entity.

[10][11] Today, LAMP maintains four archaeologists on staff and works with a team of archaeological conservators, and regularly employs a large number of volunteers and student interns.

To date, the oldest identified shipwreck discovered in St. Augustine waters is the sloop Industry, a British supply ship lost on May 6, 1764, while attempting to make port with munitions, tools, and other equipment for the garrisons in Britain's recently acquired colony of Florida.

[12][13][14] In 2009, LAMP archaeologists discovered the second oldest shipwreck in northeast Florida waters, an unidentified colonial sailing vessel known as the "Storm Wreck".

The wreck site, completely buried when initially discovered, has been subject to excavations each summer from 2010 to 2012, and seems to consist of scattered remnants of cargo, ship's equipment and components, military hardware, and personal possessions.

LAMP archaeologists, along with volunteer and student divers, have documented and recovered a wide range of well-preserved artifacts, including numerous iron and copper cauldrons, pewter spoons and plates, an iron tea kettle, ceramic and glass fragments, belt and shoe buckles, a brass candlestick, bricks, a flintlock Queen Anne pistol, three Brown Bess muskets (two of which were loaded, one with buck and ball), thousands of lead shot, military buttons (including one from a Royal Provincial unit and one from the 71st Regiment of Foot, Fraser's Highlanders), a cask of nails, tools and navigational equipment (including a sight from an octant), ship's hardware and rigging elements, the ship's lead deck pump, a bronze ship's bell, a 4-pounder cannon, and a 9-pounder carronade, believed to be the second oldest in the world.

[15][16][17][18][19] After three seasons of excavation and laboratory analysis of artifacts, it is believed that this vessel was a ship involved in the December 18, 1782, evacuation of Charleston at the end of the American Revolution, carrying Loyalist refugees and troops to St. Augustine, which was a loyal British colony at the time.

This was the final British fleet to leave Charleston, and when it arrived between December 24 and 31, 1782, as many as sixteen vessels were lost on the sandbar in front of the St. Augustine inlet.

The latter shipwreck carried a cargo of cement in barrels which was probably intended for the city's late 19th century building boom, associated with industrialist entrepreneur Henry Flagler.

Current work includes the implementation of the First Coast Maritime Archaeology Project, a comprehensive program of research and outreach focusing on the waters around St. Augustine and elsewhere in northeast Florida.

[26] St. Augustine Lighthouse was featured as one of the haunted locations on the paranormal TV series Most Terrifying Places in America on an episode titled "Restless Dead", which aired on the Travel Channel in 2018.