At our Florida Lighthouse Association meeting we had the honored to have Bob and Sandra Shanklin, better know as the "Lighthouse People", as speakers. They were the first and to my knownledge the only people to photograph every lighthouse in the United States. When they started in 1987, there was no Lighthouse Challenge to go to, many lighthouses were near impossible to get to. They were both retired and would work to raise money to go on a trip and then travel till they ran out of money and then go back to work until they saved up for the next trip. Also when they started there was not a complete list of lighthouses, they researched and also learned from people lighthouses they had missed lighthouses on earlier trips. Therefore, they had to back track several times. They didn't even give up when they found out how many lighthouses there were (their early estimate was 200 or so). Some of the lights the coast guard took them to, but that was an exception not likely to be repeated. These people were the trail blazers for us current lighthouse hunters. Chances are what ever you have done to see a lighthouse, they have done also.
They both spoke and the stories were very interesting. Bob even saw a ghost at a lighthouse in New England.
The couple now have a new mission. They are going to scan and digitize all the archival lighthouse pictures they can and have several places to store the information. Many of the photo's are fading and of course the flood waters of Katrina destroyed many one of a kind pictures that the Coast Guard had.
If you get a chance visit their website at
http://www.thelighthousepeople.com/
