From 1875 to 1886 a total of ten houses of refuge and two life-saving stations were constructed along Florida’s shoreline as part of the US Life-Saving Service system. One lifesaving station was located on the west coast near Pensacola while the others were on the east coast from south of Matanzas Inlet to Biscayne Bay. These houses and stations, along with the families who lived in them, serviced the Florida coastline for forty years providing rescues and assistance to those traveling by water and land. My dissertation research explores houses of refuge and life-saving stations along the Florida coastline during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by documenting and comparing the material culture assemblages, associated landscapes and seascapes, and historical documents of individual houses and stations both within the context and to each other.
My dissertation can be downloaded here.