Organizations interested in acquiring one of the lighthouses need to submit a letter expressing interest in the property and complete a rigorous application process.
This tells me that the GSA wants to make absolutely certain that you have a huge boner for lighthouses and intend to take good care of these important historical monuments, but......in the next sentence.......
If no suitable steward is identified, the lighthouses will be auctioned to the general public.
In otherwords, if no one comes forward with a boner for lighthouses, they go to the highest bidder, or fuck, you can just have it for free.
One day, just to get out of house for a while, I took the historial lighthouse tour in NewPort bay. It's basically a Ferry that takes you near each of the 30 historical lighthouses (or remnants thereof) in the bay. Most are faithfully maintained. Some have been converted to personal houses and barely resemble their former lighthousiness.
One lighthouse is nothing more than a rock with some bits of rubble and metal about a mile off the coast. It was completely destroyed by a giant wave in the early 1900's. It's sole occupant was in the lighthouse at the time and died.
So yeah. Living on an island by myself in a cozy little lighthouse sounds spiffy, until a nice wave comes along. I'm a lousy swimmer and I dislike drowning.
The lighthouse in Nebraska looks nice, but there are people in Nebraska. :(