Jupiter Inlet Life-Saving Station

In eighteen eighty-five, the United States Life-Saving Service erected a station at this site near Jupiter Inlet, making it the only such rescue outpost on the entire Florida East Coast. The man who ran it was Charles R. Carlin, an English immigrant who had already been serving as an assistant keeper at the nearby Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse.

Carlin became the station's first keeper. The Life-Saving Service, which would later merge into the Coast Guard in nineteen fifteen, was created to rescue the crews and passengers of ships wrecked along America's treacherous coastlines. This stretch of the Florida coast was particularly dangerous, with shallow reefs and unpredictable currents claiming vessels regularly.

Carlin and his surfmen trained constantly to launch rescue boats through breaking surf, often at night and in storms, to pull survivors from the sea.