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From Bonfires to Beacons
From Bonfires to Beacons
The earliest form of lighthouse was likely a bonfire on a beach, lit to warn passing boats of land or rocking outcroppings. Over time, bonfires evolved to structures elevated to provide better warning to passing ships. Here are some fast lighthouse facts:
The first known lighthouse was the Pharos of Alexandria, Egypt. It is considered to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. A drawing of what it might have looked like is here.
Based on ancient accounts, it was constructed between 300 and 280 BCE and stood about 450 feet high! It was destroyed in the early 1300s by invaders and earthquakes.
The oldest existing lighthouse is thought to be La Coruna (pictured above) in Spain. It dates to approximately 20 BCE!
There were 12 lighthouses in operation when the colonies declared independence in 1776.
The Lighthouse Service was created in 1789 by Congress, to provide for lighthouse construction and maintenance. Lighthouses were placed under the purview of the Department of Revenue (the department was disbanded in 1820), the Department of the Treasury until 1903, then the Bureau of Commerce and Transportation. From 1852 to 1910, the Lighthouse Board controlled U.S. lighthouses, then the Bureau of Lighthouses took over. The Coast Guard ultimately took over Lighthouse oversight in 1939.
The most expensive lighthouse built in America is the St. George Reef lighthouse, built in Crescent City, CA. It was constructed over a period of 10 years, from 1882 to 1892 and cost $715,000 at the time. It was abandoned by the Coast Guard in 1972.
The tallest lighthouse in the world is the Lighthouse of Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia (pictured right). It stands 436 feet tall and not only acts as a lighthouse, but also serves as a control room for the city’s port and harbor.
You can read more about John Muir here:
The oldest existing lighthouse in the United States is in Sandy Hook, New Jersey. Never rebuilt, it was constructed in 1764 and part of the building was paid for by the sale of lottery tickets!
To watch an 11-minute video showing some of the most beautiful lighthouses in the world, click here:
san diego lighthouses - by karen scanlon
san diego lighthouses - by karen scanlon
City planners recognized that if “New Town” San Diego was to become a prominent shipping and commerce port—in competition with San Francisco and Los Angeles—a lighthouse on the peninsula of Point Loma was urgent, as was dredging of the harbor entrance and bay. The channel of San Diego Bay was riddled with shoals that lay in wait under varying tides for the bellies of ships. Sea captains were forced to devise tedious routes to avoid them, or anchor off Coronado Island (it was an island, then).
In 1850 the United States Coast Survey determined the site for a lighthouse on the tip of the high peninsula of Point Loma. There were some who advised that the 462-foot elevation would place the structure in prevailing low cloud and fog. And, that the site was not exactly in San Diego became a source of contention with the contractor, who happened to need a road from the dock to the summit for supply delivery.
Considering that many United States lighthouses are still in operation after 200 or more years, San Diego’s first lighthouse served a short span of little more than 35 years—fog finally defeating its brilliant white beams. By the mid-1880s, spar buoys and bay beacons began to appear, marking high spots along the waterway. But more was needed.
In 1891, a new Point Loma Lighthouse was constructed at a lower elevation to more effectively serve mariners at San Diego. A secondary lighthouse inside the harbor entrance was lighted the previous year at Ballast Point, a low sandy spit nestled in the lee of the peninsula. San Diego required two lighthouses now: One for coastwise travel and bringing ships off the open ocean, and another to guide vessels into the harbor and away from Ballast Point.
San Diego’s lighthouse keepers and their families lived inside the protective arms of a military compound and were indelibly linked to war efforts at America’s extreme southwestern edge. Though the southern extremity of Point Loma had been set aside in 1852 as a military reservation, by then, the old harbor fortification of Fort Guijarros lay in ruins. The build-up of seacoast defense at the sleepy port of San Diego was underway when construction of the first lighthouse was begun in 1854. Gun emplacements were added in the 1890s, but there was no permanent military installation until the completion of Fort Rosecrans in 1904.
Interestingly, Fort Rosecrans took its name in honor of General William Starke Rosecrans, following his death in 1898. A West Point graduate, Civil War hero, and United States Congressman from California, Rosecrans would have been U.S. President had he responded in timely fashion to the invitation of Abraham Lincoln to be his running mate.
Ballast Point’s keeper of the bay beacons James Relue Sweet occasionally attended Saturday night dances at the new Army post. It was on such occasion that he met Celia Aileen Rogers, a young woman migrated from Kansas. The two were later married, on July 4, 1905, on San Diego Bay aboard the vessel Point Loma. A speedy ceremony was necessary when the officiating clergy became seasick.
Artillerymen and soldiers were scattered over Point Loma and many of them lived in underground barracks just beyond the lighthouse fence. Searchlights and a menagerie of large guns were staged in the backyard of the station dwellings. Keeper James Dudley’s daughters remember an incident that took place prior to the start of World War II. The schoolgirls were reading on the sun porch of the big house where a large window contained 105 small panes of glass. The front door with its large embossed pane stood in a nearby alcove. February sun was too warm and the girls moved into the living room, closing the doors behind them.
“We were not there long,” Joan says, “when ‘KAABOOM!’ An explosion! Glass in the front door blew into the sun porch where shards of it embedded inches into the floor.”
As happened, a defective fuse in a six-inch, high explosive projectile caused a premature detonation at nearby Battery Humphreys. Five soldiers were killed and seven were wounded. Both the tube and the cradle were destroyed.
With the automation of lighthouses, beginning in the 1960s, the need for a manned light station on Ballast Point faded. The station was razed in 1960 to make way for the Navy’s submarine support facility. Today, the lantern sits on an Old Town San Diego sidewalk. The bell tower was moved to a private residence in east San Diego county, and the one-ton fog bell was retrieved from the scrap yard for five cents a pound and, at last report, is kept in the state of Florida with its private owner.
Time had left its mark on Point Loma’s working lighthouse, too. The giant prismatic lens—a modern marvel of the 1890s—stood motionless near the end of 1997. Station resident Coast Guard Commander Frederick Kenney recalled that, “My friend David Tam and I were below the cliffs fishing. It was Veteran’s Day last year. David looked up at the tower and asked me if the lens didn’t rotate 24-hours. I told him it did. We stared at the light for some time and noticed the lens was not turning. I phoned operations to come out and have a look at it.”
In USNMC Commander David Tam’s words, “It felt funny not to have the sense of the light rotating and casting its light about. We climbed the stairs and noticed that the motor was still running but the lens wasn’t moving.”
Aids to Navigation was able to restart the lens rotation, but decided the time had come to cease operation in order to preserve the lens. A blue tarp, secured by a Bungi cord, was draped over the quiet lens until a more befitting zippered canvas cover replaced it.
The future of Point Loma’s leggy tower remained uncertain—its lifeblood gone. U.S. Coast Guard personnel removed the lens in 2001, and maintain solar-powered channel markers at the bay entrance, which reference the Point, cliffs, and rocks by use of a variable rotating beacon and sound signal at the lighthouse.
“We’re really doing the same things at the lighthouse today, but without so much style,” admitted PO Mark Brookmole, Officer in Charge, ANT Sector San Diego, in 2001. “We’re in the business of aids to navigation, and any sentiment toward them is often the by-product. Restoration and preservation fall to the communities that claim them.” And so it is for San Diego, with an impressive collection of four lighthouse lenses held and cared for by Cabrillo National Monument, National Park Service.
Within the ongoing course of lighthouse preservation, the adult children whose families ‘kept’ the light stations have come to certain notoriety. Few remain to recount what life was really like—that their isolated childhoods were unique. In their desires to keep this maritime history alive, they also take pleasure in honoring their fathers, and for some, their grandfathers.
As is so often true, children are too busy being children to have complete appreciation of a father’s work until they become adults themselves. Today, these adult children of San Diego’s lightkeepers recognize that they experienced a moment in time that is no more, and will not be again.
Six lighthouses have sent beams into or out of San Diego. At the upcoming presentation, enjoy photos and narratives from some of the adult children of our keepers.
Finally, a two-year, nearly three million dollar restoration of San Diego’s operational lighthouse was completed last year. But why put that much money into an old rust bucket? The answer and photos are part of the fun!
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