Frank's Island Light was an early Louisiana lighthouse built to mark the Mississippi River entrance channel from the delta, intended both as a navigational aid and a monumental structure. First funded in 1803, the project was delayed by the War of 1812, then revived in 1816 under a commission that revised Benjamin Latrobe's ambitious design. After the first structure collapsed in 1819, Winslow Lewis replaced it with a simpler double-walled conical brick tower built partly from salvaged materials, and the light first shone in 1823. Once the tallest lighthouse on the Gulf Coast, it was abandoned by the late 1850s as the channel silted up, yet its ruin stood until 2002.