A Light in the Wilderness: The Story of Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse & the Southeast Florida Frontier

by James D. Snyder

Although nearly 7 million people live along the southeast Florida coast, scarcely three generations ago it was a wild, lawless frontier ruled by bears, snakes and alligators. But when a lighthouse was built at Jupiter Inlet in 1860, it became the hub for hunters, surveyors, Civil War blockade runners, Union gunboats and pioneer farmers. A Light in the Wilderness, with over seventy rare photos, maps and letters, tells how southeast Florida survived the catharsis of the Civil War, how the lighthouse at Jupiter drew the first families into its orbit, and how it became a key link in the steamboat-railroad path that led people to the Garden of Eden.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published November 10, 2006

About the author

James D. Snyder, author of the newly-released The Music Makers, has won numerous awards for historical fiction novels ranging from the genesis of Christianity to the Spanish discovery of Florida to the story of a young woman caught up in high-stakes blockade-running during the Civil War. “The common thread among them,” he says, “is an effort to help the reader grasp the essence of a dramatic historical period through the lives of individuals who lived through it.”
In addition to his novels, author Snyder writes and speaks about the colorful history surrounding his home on the Loxahatchee River in South Florida. Five Thousand Years on the Loxahatchee is a pictorial history of Jupiter-Tequesta, FL while Black Gold and Silver Sands describes the hard-scrabble beginnings of Palm Beach county. A Trip Down the Loxahatchee shows the river’s beauty through the eyes of 52 painters and photographers. Life and Death on the Loxahatchee tells the story of a larger-than-life “Tarzan” who fascinated locals until his mysterious death. A Light in the Wilderness shows how a lone lighthouse in forlorn Jupiter became the magnet that drew a throng of early settlers.
Jim Snyder has been a writer and editor since graduating from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and The George Washington University graduate school of political science. Beginning in the 1970s he founded what would become the largest independent Washington news bureau for business and medical magazines. In 1984 it became Enterprise Communications Inc., with its own magazines and trade shows.
In 1997, when the company was sold to Thomson-Reuters Corp., Snyder was able to pursue a second career as author-historian. Today he is also active in several organizations to protect the Loxahatchee River and its rich history.

Reviews

[Literary Reviewer · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Light in the Wilderness by James Snyder is a well-researched book on Florida’s appealing history. The author provides the reader with interesting information about the construction of the Jupiter lighthouse in South Florida in 1860. It became a center point for hunters, surveyors, Civil War blockade runners, Union gunboats, and pioneer farmers.

For generations, Florida was completely occupied by wilderness and wildlife until the Jupiter lighthouse attracted families to Florida, and now the coast is home to millions of families. Snyder also provides the history of Florida, from slavery to the building of the railroad, to the Civil War and many more historical moments. Vintage maps, letters, and rare photos are also used to describe the ancient story of how Florida survived the civil war.

Snyder has written a book that is not a big topic, and hard to find a book on the history of Florida being built from the ground up. However, the author has done his research, which shows in his book detailed accounts, maps, and images of historical figures that inhabited Florida. I enjoyed that the author started from the beginning when Southeast Florida was just wilderness and no one occupied the land, allowing the reader to get a complete picture of what Florida was many years ago.

If you are not one that is keen on history, this may be one book that is a little difficult to get through because it is factual, and it is similar to watching a documentary on the History Channel. For example, it was interesting to read that Florida was an integral part of the Navy, capturing over 100 Confederate ships. Interesting facts like this make this book a worthy and appealing read. The Jupiter Lighthouse brought diverse people together and served the local community.

A Light in the Wilderness is an engaging read that will have readers appreciating the history of Florida and how it became a prosperous state today. I highly recommend this book to history buffs and those who want something new to learn.

[Josh Liller · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am currently a docent (tour guide) at Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse & Museum. I picked this up to read because of that, but it got put off due to college-related reading. It got bumped to the top of my reading list because I needed a break from heavier works plus I agreed to give a presentation about the lighthouse's history on short notice (although the presentation ended up not happening after all).

This is the second book I've read by James Snyder (the first was Life and Death on the Loxahatchee: The Story of Trapper Nelson). I breezed through this book as the author is very readable and some of it was pretty interesting, fleshing out details about things I already partly knew. "Light in the Wilderness" covers the origins and construction of the Jupiter Lighthouse, Civil War events in and around the Jupiter Inlet, and local history (predominately about the lighthouse itself) up through what the author considers the end of the 'wilderness': the 1889 opening of the Celestial Railroad between Jupiter and Lake Worth. Unless a sequel is planned to cover lighthouse history from 1890 onward, I feel that information should have been at least summarized in the epilogue.

However, while the book is an easy read, the author's style here was a little odd. Few books I read include so many sentences ending in question marks and surely none include so many one sentence paragraphs (conversations in fiction books excluded). The author may be too accepting of some anecdotal stories as facts. The book also ends with a bizarre epilogue involving spiritualists and psychics which, despite their sincerity, strain credibility.