Congress designated the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse Outstanding Natural Area (JILONA) in 2008 to ensure the permanent protection of the site's historical, cultural, and natural qualities. The 120-acre property was originally set aside by the General Land Office in 1854 as the Jupiter Lighthouse Reservation. The area is owned by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) as part of their National Conservation Lands (NCL) system. BLM manages the property in partnership with the Loxahatchee River Historical Society (LRHS).
In 1951, the US Air Force (USAF) established Jupiter Auxiliary Air Force Base (Jupiter AAFB) on the lighthouse reservation. This station monitored cruise missile test launches from Cape Canaveral as part of the Atlantic or Eastern Missile Tracking Range. USAF personnel were housed in some of the former Naval Radio Station buildings and tracking facilities were located in a triangular area north of Beach Road. A mobile tracking radar unit also sometimes operated a little north of the lighthouse. The USAF contracted tracking range operations to PanAm in 1954, who further subcontracted some range operations and maintenance to RCA.
Information on subsequent station operations is incomplete. The station was probably deactivated for a time in the 1950s, but had been reactivated by 1961. That year a tall radio antenna was installed NW of the drawbridge to Jupiter Island. This LORAC (Long Range Communication) antenna was a modified version of LORAN used for guiding Pershing ballistic missile tests. Jupiter's station remained in operation until the 1980s, variously referred to as the Jupiter Tracking Station, Jupiter Repeater Station, and Air Force Missile Test Center (AFMTC) Station #2. The missile range by this time extended all the way to the South Atlantic with many shore and ship stations in between.
The LORAC antenna was removed in 1995 and most of the other antennas and structures were removed by the early 2000s. The former LORAC site has been partly restored to a natural condition. At the time of this cache's publication the only remaining tracking station structures north of Beach Road are the fenced off former station area with three small antennas and a utility shack.
Located south of Beach Road are two small one-room concrete shacks called Subcable Huts. An underwater cable connected Canaveral with Jupiter and stations in the Bahamas and Puerto Rico. The Subcable Huts are now empty, but once probably contained communications-related equipment for signal boosting and/or filtering out interference.
Please do not enter any fenced areas.