Gibraltar Point

Gibraltar Point, as per Gibraltar in the Mediterranean, was the most easily defensible point in the harbor. Captain John Simcoe ordered a British fort built here in 1800. It was destroyed just 13 years later during the American raid on York. Not far inland stands the photogenic Gibraltar Point Lighthouse (1809), just 25m tall, built with grey limestone quarried at Queenston on the Niagara escarpment. The lighthouse was the first of its kind on the Great Lakes, using sperm-whale oil to fuel its lamp. Its first keeper, JP Radan Muller, disappeared mysteriously in 1815. Years later human bones were unearthed nearby, supporting the theory that Muller was knocked off by American soldiers for refusing to share his bootleg whiskey.