The Natchez Lighthouse

The Natchez Lighthouse was the second lighthouse the United States ever built on the Mississippi River, and the only one ever built above the delta — a navigation light for the bluff and the landing in the years when the river was the only way anything moved.

The 1840 tornado that took the lower town took the lighthouse with it. What was left standing was unstable enough that the citizens asked for the rest to be pulled down, and it was. No one ever built another. A river city that ran entirely on the river decided it did not need its light back — the channel had moved, the steamboats knew the bluff by heart, and the thing was simply not replaced. It is gone so completely that most of Natchez does not know it was ever there.