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Secret Station J & History Museum

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The Loxahatchee River Historical Society’s Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse & Museum occupies the last remaining building from an important World War II installation that existed alongside the U.S. Coast Guard on the Lighthouse Reservation. That installation was officially called a U.S. Naval Supplementary Radio Station, code named Station J.

The Museum two-story building was originally a Naval Married Men’s Quarters. The Florida State Historic Marker immediately to the east of the building was dedicated February 11, 2007. It reads:

World War II U.S. Naval Housing Building

The U.S. Navy constructed this building (circa 1939) on land included in the Federal Jupiter Lighthouse Reservation established by President Franklin Pierce in 1854. Built as Married Men’s Quarters, the two-story wood-frame building had six two-bedroom apartments, each with brick fireplaces, and a continuous screened first-floor porch facing the Inlet. During World War II, Navy personnel lived in this building, and in the then adjacent Transmitter and Dormitory building and the Chief Petty Officers’ Quarters. These three buildings were part of the Direction Finding Station built on the reservation known as “Station J.” Developed to locate the German submarines torpedoing ships off the Florida coast, Station J also served as a navigational beacon for military ships and aircraft and for communications during the war. Station J was closed in July 1945, and starting in 1958, most of the World War II military wood-frame structures including the two adjacent buildings, were demolished. In the 1960s, the Navy gave this portion of the Reservation, including this building, to the U.S. Coast Guard. In 2004, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management transferred ownership of this portion of the Reservation to the Town of Jupiter.

Check out the five military flags that once flew over JILONA.