Pigeon Point Lighthouse and beach

The Pigeon Point Lighthouse is fifty miles south of San Francisco along the central California coast near the town of Pescadero.  At 115 feet tall, it's one of the tallest lighthouses in America.  It was first lit in 1872 and, although the lighthouse tower is no longer active, the point is still an active Coast Guard station.

The lighthouse is in need of restoration and has been closed since 2001 when pieces of the brickwork near the top fell off.  The grounds are still open, but the area around the base of the tower is fenced off.  The park used to have an annual lighting of the historic lighthouse event in November to commemorate when the lighthouse was first lit, but discontinued the lighting in 2011.  The historic lighting may resume after the restoration project on the tower is completed.  The 2000 pound first order Fresnel lens that sat atop the tower and cast the lighthouse's light out to the sea is now sitting in the fog signal building.  It's 16 feet tall, 6 feet in diameter, and consists of 1008 prisms fastened to a brass framework.

Bob took these photos of the lighthouse in 2010 on the day of the historic lighting event and posted his night time shot of the lighthouse lit up in an earlier posting.

Remember, it's not just a picture, it's a story.

Point Bonita Lighthouse at sunset, San Francisco, CA

Two views of the Point Bonita Lighthouse at sunset.  This lighthouse is in one of many units in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in and around the San Francisco Bay area.  This historic lighthouse is perched on a sea stack at the entrance to the Golden Gate and is still in operation.  It requires a hike through a tunnel and over a bridge that looks like a miniature version of the Golden Gate Bridge to get to.  These images show the sun setting over the Pacific Ocean and its light glinting in the lens of the lighthouse.

The lighthouse is only open to visitors this late in the day during Sunset/Full Moon guided tours given by the National Park Service.

Remember it's not just a picture, it's a story.

Pigeon Point Lighthouse lit up

Pigeon Point Lighthouse on the central California coast is one of the tallest lighthouses on the West Coast of the United States.  It has been replaced in its duties by an aerobeacon and is now a state historic park.  In mid-November, the rangers would turn on the lighthouse in an annual lighting ceremony to commemorate its very first lighting on November 15, 1872.  This is an image of that lit-up lighthouse showing the spokes-of-light pattern that the Fresnel lens creates.  The rotating lens would create a flash pattern that was unique to each lighthouse, so that mariners could time the flashes and know which lighthouse they were seeing.

The tower at Pigeon Point has been closed to the public since 2001, because it was deemed unsafe.  The state parks department has begun restoring this tower and the first step in the process was removing the historic Fresnel lens, so that it wouldn't be damaged during the tower's reconstruction process.  So, the good news is that the lens is safe, but the bad news is that the annual lighting of the lighthouse won't happen again for many years, until the restoration is complete and the lens is returned to the top of the tower.

This image was shot at ISO 1600, so it's showing some digital noise.  The very thin fog that helped accentuate the spokes of light, also helped blur the moon in the upper right.

Remember, it's not just a photo, it's a story.

Point Reyes Lighthouse lit up at dusk

Our first backpacking trip was in Point Reyes National Seashore along the coast north of San Francisco, California.  The centerpiece of this National Park Service unit is the historic Point Reyes Lighthouse, constructed at the very end of the point stretching about 10 miles out into the Pacific Ocean. Once a month from spring to fall, the park leads visitors on hikes to light the historic lighthouse. It was also on our first time out to see the lighthouse that we saw a gray whale for the first time. It was in the surf approaching Point Reyes Beach in water shallow enough that we could see the entire animal.

The lighthouse was first operated in 1870, and was built after a level spot was blasted with dynamite, about 300 feet from the top of the cliff. It uses a rotating Fresnel lens that concentrated the center light source into 24 beams such that someone in a ship off-shore would see a flash every 5 seconds. Each lighthouse has its own distinct flash pattern, so a ship's captain would be able to identify which lighthouse he's seeing.

Remember, it's not just a picture, it's a story.