Lighthouse

Point Reyes is the foggiest point on the Pacific coast. It is also the nation’s windiest headland, with northwesterlies sometimes blowing over 130 miles per hour! The first recorded shipwreck off its shores was the San Augustin which broke up and landed at Drake’s Beach in 1595.
As a result of this shipwreck, for years it was impossible to tell whether 16th century artifacts found on the beach came from this wreck or the Golden Hind, captained by Sir Francis Drake, which had careened on the west coast in 1579. However, new historical evidence has revealed that the pattern on the china washed up on Drakes Beach dated from the late 1570’s and apparently the pattern on fashionable china changed almost every year.

The fog hid the coastline and granite rocks from many ship captains. After more than 60 shipwrecks in the area, the Point Reyes Lighthouse was built in 1870. It was forged from iron plate and bolted into solid rock in the cliff. This lighthouse was notorious as a desolate place to work. The job was extremely arduous and morale was often low. The lighthouse is reached by walking down 308 steep stairs. When it was first built, the manually operated fog horn was housed in a building 638 steps further down the cliff.

The lantern room contains a Fresnel lens, 7'10" high, which weighs three tons. Manufactured in Paris, it was ingeniously designed so that the thousand hand-ground prisms in the lens could focus the weak light of oil lamps into 24 powerful rays. These rays could be seen up to 30 miles out to sea.

The first-order Fresnel lens, so called because it is the largest lens of its type, is no longer operational on a daily basis. Occasionally it is switched on for public viewing and one sees the lens itself slowly turning.
The lighthouse was automated in 1975 with the installation of an automated reflecting light, electric fog signal and radio beacon equipment. The National Park Service took control of the lighthouse which is now open to the public. It is an excellent location for whale-watching in the winter.id December to April.

When a ship loses her way and is swept on to the rocks, the power of the sea makes short work of her destruction. Few survive the icy water and the pounding of the surf. Lighthouses are vital to save lives, even in this era of satellite navigation.

The early crews of the lifesaving stations on the coast had this grim motto:
“You have to go out; but you don’t have to come back.”