The Other Building at the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse Gets Its Own November

The Ponce Inlet Lighthouse's history pages include a photograph captioned "Reds team enjoying a picnic on the lawn of the Pacetti Hotel, c. 1975." In those years the Cincinnati Reds visited the hotel every spring training. The caretakers, Ann Caneer and Billy Joe Potts, threw them parties with live music, fishing off the dock, oyster shucking and all the seafood they could eat. The team on that lawn won the World Series in 1975 and again in 1976.

The lawn is next door to the tallest lighthouse in Florida. The white building on it is part of how that lighthouse came to be there and why it still stands. This November, the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse & Museum puts the hotel at the center of its calendar, with guided tours on six dates and a separate program on the Reds connection.

Ten Acres for $400

The hotel's history starts before the tower. In 1842, Bartola Clemente Pacetti moved onto the Pons land grant at what was then Mosquito Inlet and tended an orange grove. He earned his living by salvaging shipwrecks, piloting boats through the inlet and guiding fishermen. He married Martha Jane Wickwire in 1861 at the nearby Dun-Lawton Plantation. After the Civil War he built a small cottage on the Halifax River near the inlet, and the couple began taking in boarders.

The museum's main Pacetti Hotel page says that in 1881 they built a larger boarding house beside the cottage. That building is the Pacetti Hotel. The family also sold some of its land, including 10 acres sold to the government for $400 so a lighthouse could be built nearby. Around 1886, the Pacettis added a two-story wing at the back with a caretaker's room, a kitchen, a rear porch and as many as seven more guest bedrooms.

The museum's separate hotel history page gives a different order of events. It dates the land sale to the U.S. Government to 1883 and says the Pacettis used the $400 to finish building the hotel. It adds that some of the lighthouse construction crew possibly slept in the newly finished hotel until bunkhouses could be built nearby. Either way, the light station stands on ground the hotel's owners sold for $400. The lighthouse's own history describes the Pacetti as the first real hotel in the small community of Ponce Park, the settlement that later became the town of Ponce Inlet.

The Charter Trade Started at This Dock

The hotel left a second mark that anyone can see from the marinas today. The Pacettis guided their guests on fishing and sightseeing trips, and the museum credits that business with starting the inlet's charter fishing industry, which still thrives. The museum's history page describes the place as a fishing resort that drew visitors with its guides and with Martha's hospitality.

The fishing reputation outlasted the family. Bartola died in 1898, and Martha ran the hotel with her children until 1917. In 1920 Elizabeth and Fred Phares of Lexington, Kentucky, bought it and used it as a clubhouse for balls and dances. Later owners made it a private winter home, and it stopped operating as a hotel. In 1936 Olivia Gamble, daughter of James N. Gamble of Procter & Gamble, bought it in memory of her father. He loved the area and was reported to have stayed and fished at the hotel many times.

Her 1937 restoration gave the building its current shape. She joined the two rooflines so it reads as one structure, and she added a concrete seawall, a new dock and a gate at the street entrance. The hotel today looks much as it did after that work. The property then passed to her nephew, Louis Nippert, and his wife, Louise. They made a second-floor suite for their Florida visits, and through them the hotel came to host the Reds. The lighthouse's own pages give two dates for when the Nipperts took over. One ties it to Olivia Gamble's death in 1961, and the other says 1968.

The Caretaker Who Helped Save the Light Station

The third link is the one that matters most to the lighthouse. In 1970 the Nipperts hired Billy Joe Potts and Virginia Ann Caneer as live-in caretakers. Living next door to the light station, the couple joined a group of local citizens working to save it, since it had fallen into disrepair. That group saved the station and developed it into a National Historic Landmark and a museum. Ann Caneer became the museum's first executive director.

She lived and worked at the Pacetti for 40 years in total and retired from the Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse Preservation Association in 2008. In other words, the museum that now runs the hotel was partly built by someone who lived in it.

Nearly a Decade Empty, Then a Purchase Next Door

After 2010 the hotel had no resident caretaker. The property went to the Greenacres Foundation, an Ohio nonprofit founded by the Nipperts, and the building sat unused for nearly a decade. The restoration happened over these steps:

1. October 2019. The Ponce de Leon Inlet Lighthouse Preservation Association bought the hotel for $1.7 million.
2. Late 2020. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places after a process that took about a year.
3. Funding. The Paul B. and Constance D. Hunter Foundation gave a $1.5 million grant and agreed to match donations up to $250,000. It later added another $250,000, for a total of more than $2 million.
4. Construction. Crews restored the windows and doors, reinforced the floors, built a new dock, and installed climate control and fire suppression. Visitors and volunteers donated beds, steamer trunks, a piano, porcelain dishes and other furnishings for the building's 5,000-plus square feet.
5. Summer 2024. The Constance D. Hunter Historic Pacetti Hotel Museum opened to the public, nearly a century after the hotel first closed its doors.
6. January 29, 2025. Hometown News Volusia reported the ribbon-cutting. It noted that original architectural features were kept and reinforced with modern work.

The museum calls the building one of Volusia County's oldest and best-preserved historic structures, and a fine example of late-1800s Florida Cracker architecture.

November Builds the Calendar Around the Hotel

The museum has been open for more than two years. In November the lighthouse is programming it as a series. Every tour below runs from 11 a.m. to noon at the Pacetti Hotel Museum, 4928 S. Peninsula Dr., and the event listings say entry to the hotel is included with regular admission.

The Reds program is the one event held off the peninsula. The lighthouse describes it as a photographic narrative of some of baseball's most famous players during the Nippert years, and the listing shows no fee. The Nov. 12 talk, given by the lighthouse's director of operations, covers the Halifax River during World War II, when German U-boats operated just offshore. No registration is required.

Fitting a Visit Around the Holiday Weeks

You don't need a tour date to go inside. The lighthouse offers self-guided maps for both museums during regular hours. From September 8, 2026, through May 30, 2027, both museums are open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, with the last admission sold at 5 p.m. The site lists Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day as exceptions. Thanksgiving is Thursday, November 26, so the Nov. 27 tour falls on the first open day after the holiday closure. The lighthouse's admission rates page lists combined lighthouse and Pacetti tickets. It also says general admission needs no advance reservation and that ticket sales end an hour before closing.

One November program is already full. The monthly Climb to the Moon, a keeper-led lighthouse tour under the full moon, is set for Tuesday, November 24, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Its listing shows it as sold out. The listings for the Pacetti Hotel tours don't mention a cap or advance tickets.

Ponce Inlet's south-end history is part of how The Cook Group understands this riverfront corner of the peninsula, from the old Pacetti land to the marinas the charter trade still fills. If that history is part of what keeps you here, or part of what draws you, we're glad to talk it through with you. Schedule a Private Consultation.