Choctaw Point Lighthouse

This illustration of the Choctaw Point lighthouse in Mobile Bay appeared in Ballou’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion on June 27, 1857. The periodical, founded in Massachusetts in 1851 as Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion by Frederick Gleason and Maturin Murray Ballou, was extremely popular and was among the first in the nation to provide illustrations alongside news and popular culture stories.

Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration