A Light in the Wilderness: The Story of Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse & the Southeast Florida Frontier

Although nearly 7 million people live along the southeast Florida coast, scarcely three generations ago it was a wild, lawless frontier ruled by bears, snakes and alligators. But when a lighthouse was built at Jupiter Inlet in 1860, it became the hub for hunters, surveyors, Civil War blockade runners, Union gunboats and pioneer farmers. A Light in the Wilderness, with over seventy rare photos, maps and letters, tells how southeast Florida survived the catharsis of the Civil War, how the lighthouse at Jupiter drew the first families into its orbit, and how it became a key link in the steamboat-railroad path that led people to the Garden of Eden.

   James D. Snyder, author of A Light in the Wilderness, has won several awards for both histories and historical novels. "The common thread among them," he says, "is an effort to help the reader grasp the essence of a dramatic historical period through the lives of individuals who lived through it."
     Snyder also writes and speaks about the colorful history surrounding his home on the Loxahatchee River in South Florida. Other Snyder books on Florida:
    Five Thousand Years on the Loxahatchee is a pictorial history of Jupiter-Tequesta, FL
    Black Gold and Silver Sands describes the hard-scrabble beginnings of Palm Beach County. 
    A Trip Down the Loxahatchee shows the river's beauty through the eyes of 52 painters and photographers. 
   La Florida chronicles, as an historical novel, the cultural clash between the Spanish "discoverers" of Florida and the surprisingly strong and stubborn Calusa nation they encountered.      
   Life and Death on the Loxahatchee tells the story of a larger-than-life "Tarzan" who fascinated locals until his mysterious death. 
   Jim Snyder has been a writer and editor since graduating from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and The George Washington University graduate school of political science. Beginning in the 1970s he founded what would become the largest independent Washington news bureau for business and medical magazines. In 1984 it became Enterprise Communications Inc., with its own magazines and trade shows. 
    In 1997, when the company was sold to Thomson-Reuters Corp., Snyder was able to pursue a second career as author-historian. Today he is also active in several organizations to protect the Loxahatchee River and its rich history.