$35,000 was provided by Congress in 1853 for establishing a lighthouse “near Jupiter inlet, to mark the dangerous shoals lying of that point, and to guide vessels along that coast.” The following year, President Franklin Pierce signed an order setting aside a 61.5 acre parcel for the tower near the junction of the Loxahatchee and Indian Rivers. The land was part of the Fort Jupiter Reservation, which had been established in 1838 during the Second Seminole War. Lieutenant George Meade of the Bureau of Topographical Engineers soon visited the site and submitted a design for the lighthouse.

The lighthouse was to be built atop a hill with an elevation of forty-six feet. Given the flat terrain surrounding the area for miles, the hill seems somewhat of an anomaly. During the restoration work in 1999-2000, archaeologists uncovered shells and pottery fragments in excavations made on the hill near the base of the tower. The artifacts are believed to be remnants of a Native American colony, dating from around 700 AD.

With the completion of the lighthouse plans, five hundred tons of building materials were assembled and shipped to the Indian River inlet, roughly thirty-five miles north of the Fort Jupiter Reservation. The supplies were then transferred to shallow draft scows, which carried the cargo across the Indian River bar. From there, it was a laborious journey through a shallow, narrow, and crooked channel to reach the construction site. This difficulty in transporting the construction material was just the first of several unforeseen difficulties in building the lighthouse.

In 1855, just as construction on the tower had started, a group of careless surveyors in the Everglades destroyed the prized banana plants of Chief Billy Bowlegs, touching off the Third Seminole War. Fearing an attack by the enraged Indians, George Meade requested small arms and ammunitions for his “unarmed and totally defenseless” laborers. Work on the lighthouse was eventually suspended due to Indian hostilities in the area, but in 1858 the conflict was resolved and construction resumed. The Indians, however, were not the only inhospitable neighbors to threaten the workers. With Jupiter Inlet silted closed, the stagnant water surrounding the site was a perfect breeding ground for a more life threatening foe – mosquitoes. Several of the men contracted “Jupiter Fever,” a combination of malaria and yellow fever, and those that didn’t still had to suffer through the “heat of the weather” and “swarms of stinging insects.”