Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park

This guide to Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park in Miami centers on the lighthouse behind the beach and one night in July 1836, when Seminole warriors surrounded it during the Second Seminole War. Inside were only two men on duty, assistant keeper John Thompson and Aaron Carter, an enslaved man working alongside him, trading rifle fire from the windows as the siege wore on toward evening. A Navy schooner twelve miles out at sea heard the fighting before anyone on shore did.