• Photo by Carol M. Highsmith/Buyenlarge/Getty Images
    11 of 21

    Middle Bay Lighthouse, Alabama

    Rising from the center of Mobile Bay along Alabama's Gulf Coast, Middle Bay Lighthouse is a hexagonal-shaped, screw-pile lighthouse built on seven piles screwed into the muddy sea floor. The station came into service in 1885. It gained notoriety in 1916 when the lightkeeper's wife gave birth and the couple corralled a dairy cow to the lighthouse's lower deck to provide milk.

    The lighthouse was deactivated in 1967, and in 2010, $200,000 worth of repair work began on the structure. Visitors can't climb the structure, but they can see the lighthouse up close on a boat tour departing from Fairhope, Alabama.