The Story of Tybee Island Georgia!

Officially renamed "Savannah Beach" in a publicity move at the end of the 1950s, the city of Tybee Island has since reverted to its original name. The small island, which has long been a quiet getaway for the residents of Savannah, has become a popular vacation spot with tourists from outside the Savannah metropolitan area.

Tybee Island was originally inhabited by the Euchee Native American tribe and gave the island its name: tybee is a Euchee word for salt. Later, in the 1500s the Spanish laid claim to the island and named it Los Bajos. During that time the island was frequented by pirates who used the island to hide from those who pursued them. Pirates later used the island’s inland waterways for a fresh water source. As Spain gave up its claim to the island, and the surrounding areas stretching down to modern day Florida, English and French settlements sprang up around the area. In 1733 English settlers led by James Oglethorpe settled on Tybee Island before moving on to settle eventually in Savannah. In 1736 John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church, arrived on Tybee Island.

The Tybee Island lighthouse was built in the year 1736. The lighthouse was of brick and wood, standing 90 feet tall; it was the highest structure in America at that time. Five years later the lighthouse was destroyed by a storm.
In 1742 a second lighthouse was finished; this version reached 94 feet into the air. In 1773 a third lighthouse was constructed which was also destroyed, this time in 1862 by Confederate troops from nearby Fort Pulaski. Of the 100 feet of the third lighthouse only 60 feet remained which served as a rebuilding point for a fourth lighthouse.
In 1869 it was decided that the lighthouse must be protected from ever increasing tides and gale force winds so it was moved 164 feet back from the shoreline. In the years from 1871 and 1886 the walls of the lighthouse became cracked by storm forces and later the light lens was broken by the Charleston earthquake of 1886.
The latest incarnation of the Tybee Island lighthouse stands at 154 feet and in 1933 became an electrically driven lighthouse. Due to the fact that modern marine navigation techniques outgrew the need for such a lighthouse the Tybee Island lighthouse became obsolete.

*Information provided by www.wikipedia.org

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Ordered by General James Oglethorpe, Governor of the 13th colony, in 1732, the Tybee Island Light Station has been guiding mariners safe entrance into the Savannah River for over 270 years. The Tybee Island Light Station is one of America's most intact having all of its historic support buildings on its five-acre site. Rebuilt several times the current lightstation displays its 1916 day mark with 178 stairs and a First Order Fresnel lens (nine feet tall).

A large part of the reason that the first Tybee Lighthouse was blown down in storms was that it was built too close to the shore. It's foundations becoming rotten with seawater. The second lighthouse was not much further inland. Within two years of its completion, wind erosion had removed a good part of the sand under the foundations.