level. The light was visible for . Wood-frame residences were added to each side of the lighthouse several years later. In 1860, Cedar Key became the western terminus of the Florida Railroad, connecting it to Fernandina Beach, Florida on the east coast of Florida. David Levy Yulee, U.S. senator and president of the Florida Railroad, had acquired most of Way Key to house the railroad's terminal facilities. A town was platted on Way Key in 1859, and Parsons and Hale's General Store, which is now the Island Hotel, was built there in the same year. On March 1, 1861, the first train arrived in Cedar Key, just weeks before the Civil War began. Civil War era With the advent of the American Civil War in 1861, Confederate agents extinguished the light at Seahorse Key and removed its supply of sperm oil. The defense of Cedar Key was assigned to the Columbia and New River Rifles, two companies of the 4th Florida Infantry Regiment, under the command of Lt. Colonel M. Whit Smith. On July 3, 1861, four Federal war prize schooners appeared off Cedar Key. The schooners, originally captured by the USS Massachusetts off New Orleans, were under the command of U. S. Navy Lieutenant George L. Selden, nephew of former Treasurer of the United States William Selden, and manned by nineteen sailors. Col. Smith led his two rifle companies along with one six-pounder cannon twenty miles offshore on the steamer Madison and captured the schooners after firing two warning shots. With the recovery, Col. Smith and his men liberated fifteen Confederate sailors, recovered the vessels’ valuable cargo of railroad iron and turpentine and effected the first capture of a U. S. Naval officer at sea during the war. The USS Hatteras raided Cedar Key in January 1862, burning several ships loaded with cotton and turpentine and destroying the railroad's rolling stock and buildings on Way Key. Most of the Confederate troops guarding Cedar Key had been sent to Fernandina in anticipation of a Federal attack there. Cedar Key was an important source of salt for the Confederacy during the early part of the war. In October 1862 a Union raid destroyed sixty kettles on Salt Key capable of producing 150 bushels of salt a day. The Union occupied the Cedar Keys in early 1864, staying for the remainder of the war. In 1865, the Eberhard Faber mill was built