LIGHTHOUSES OF OREGON

Can you imagine being tossed around by the sea, lost in a severe storm, not knowing which direction to sail? Imagine now that you catch a glimpse of something far off, a lighthouse that’s resisting the endless pounding of waves, it’s light cutting through the storm like a watchful eye striving to locate your vessel. Picture the relief you would feel knowing you were going to make it safely home by the casting light of a Lighthouse.

Lighthouses have stood for centuries on rocky cliffs and sandy shores of Oregon’s coastline, withstanding the worst of storms. Many seamen have celebrated that glimpse of light which led them to safety.

History Of Oregon’s Lighthouses

The first lighthouse recorded in history dates back to the Lighthouse of Pharos, Egypt, which was constructed about 280 B.C.. and was regarded as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. As mariners expanded the course of their voyages and sailed to discover new worlds, the need for these aids to navigation grew. Bostonians built America's first lighthouse in 1716. Shortly after the American Revolution, the United States Lighthouse Service was established in 1789.

In the early 1800's, the Pacific Northwest was the home to Native Americans. With the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, Lewis and Clark opened the area to exploration and the Oregon Trail brought increased settlers to the Willamette and Columbia Valleys. In 1848, the Oregon Territory was created and gold was discovered in California!

Oregon's resources of timber, salmon, agricultural crops and coal were in great demand to the rest of the rapidly developing Pacific Coast, particularly San Francisco. But treacherous river bars, fog and rocky shorelines made shipping dangerous. Congress created the U.S. Coast Survey party to investigate potential lighthouse locations from San Diego Bay to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The US Lighthouse Service became a part of the United States Coast Guard in 1939.

To assist with keeping these monuments of history alive the Oregon Chapter of the United States Lighthouse Society was established on April 24, 1994, in Newport, Oregon. Currently, there are nine lighthouses remaining on the Oregon Coast, many of them carry an interesting history.

The first lighthouse on our coast was built at the entrance to the Umpqua River in 1857. Unfortunately, this light was destroyed by flooding only four years later, and the new light was not operational until December 31, 1894. This tower stands today, shining seaward from a higher, more inland elevation than the original. The Umpqua light now sits adjacent to Umpqua Lighthouse State Park, and displays an unusual red and white beam. The wheels that turn the lens wore out in 1983 so local citizens fought a winning battle to repair the light, rather than let it be replaced by a modern beacon on the outside of the tower.

The tower at Heceta Head is almost identical in design to the Umpqua River Lighthouse (just south), and was lit on March 30, 1894, just a few months earlier than Umpqua River’s new light. Two oil houses were built nearby, as well as a keeper's single dwelling and an assistant keepers' duplex further inland. During World War II, the station was filled with activity as a base of operations for Coast Guard beach patrol. Before the completion of the Oregon Coast Highway in 1932, supplies were often delivered by boat. More modern amenities followed the new highway, including electricity in 1934. Automation finally arrived on July 20, 1963. The station's original first order Fresnel lens continues to operate today, and while the head keeper's house was torn down in 1940, the assistant keepers' duplex remains. Beginning in 1970, the dwelling was used by Lane Community College as classroom space. Now known as Heceta House, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places along with the rest of the station in 1978, and money was finally available for restoration. In 1996, it began a new life as a bed & breakfast. Restoration of the lighthouse itself was performed in 1993, as part of a statewide lighthouse restoration plan.

The oldest, highest, most southerly and most westerly lighthouse on the Oregon coast is the Cape Blanco lighthouse which was first lit on December 20, 1870. Of the original station buildings, only the tower remains, though there are more recent buildings at the site. The current rotating lens replaced the original in 1936, and in 1992 it was damaged by teenage vandals. It was temporarily fixed to resume service, and fully repaired by 1994.

Just across the river from the small town of Bandon is the Coquille River Lighthouse, also known as the Bandon lighthouse. It’s light was first lit in 1896, and its fourth order lens shone until 1939 when the lighthouse was replaced by an automated light on the nearby jetty. The keeper's dwelling and all other outbuildings were torn down, and the small tower with attached fog signal building sat in abandonment, neglected and vandalized, until the townspeople of Bandon finally took a liking to it in the mid-1970's. It has now been restored as part of Bullards Beach State Park, and the fog signal room is open daily. Although it is no longer a navigational aid, the lantern room does display a decorative solar-powered light.

The second oldest lighthouse in the state, the dignified Yaquina Bay Lighthouse, ended its first term of service after only three years. First lit on November 3, 1871, it housed a fixed fifth order lens. The small light was used mainly as a harbor light for the growing town of Newport, and its excellent port. There have been stories for a century now that Yaquina Bay Lighthouse is haunted. Most can be traced back to a short story written by Lischen Miller, and printed in Pacific Monthly magazine in 1899. Though entirely fictional, the compelling story has intently attached itself to the lighthouse, and tales of strange sights and sounds have accompanied the lighthouse ever since.

The erection of the first order Yaquina Head Lighthouse (only a short distance north) eliminated the need for a lighthouse right on the bay, and the light at Yaquina Bay was extinguished on October 1, 1874. The government tried to sell the structure in 1877, but no sufficient offers were made. Years of neglect followed, though minor repairs were periodically made to save the building from complete destruction. In 1888, the building was finally utilized again as housing for workers building the new jetties at Yaquina Bay. By 1896, this work was finished, and the lighthouse was once again left largely to the elements. In 1906, the lighthouse came into use once again, this time as quarters and a lookout for the US Life Saving Service, which became part of the Coast Guard in 1915. The Coast Guard continued this usage until 1933. The next year, the lighthouse and surrounding property were acquired by the state for use as a park. The highway commission proposed demolishing the old building, but local citizens formed the Lincoln County Historical Society and succeeded in saving it, gaining it recognition as a historic landmark in 1956. It was then used as a county museum until 1974, when it was closed for major restoration work. It was completely refurbished, and filled with furniture and artifacts from the lighthouse's heyday. It is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is open to the public as the centerpiece of Yaquina Bay State Park. In 1994, a decorative light was placed in the lantern room. In the summer of 1996, a new life for the lighthouse began, as it entered a second term of service with a new lens provided by lighthouse supporter Jim Gibbs. Over 120 years after its first light was discontinued, it now shines again as an official private aid to navigation.

The Yaquina Head lighthouse is a classic seacoast tower, a design more often found on the east coast. At 93 feet tall, it is the tallest lighthouse in Oregon, and is very similar in design to the 115-foot Pigeon Point Lighthouse in central California. Construction began in 1871, and a planned 1872 lighting was delayed when it was discovered that part of the lens (shipped from France) was missing. It was finally lit on August 20, 1873. One of the persistent rumors about Yaquina Head is that it was built at the wrong location. The story goes that the light was designated for Cape Foulweather, seven miles north of Yaquina Head, but due to either the difficulty of transporting materials up the bluff at that location or a simple mistake, the contractor put the lighthouse instead at Yaquina Head. The rumor is further supported by the fact that the nearby Yaquina Bay Lighthouse was discontinued soon after, because of Yaquina Head's proximity. The source of this rumor is rooted in a place name mistake: at the time the lighthouse was built, Yaquina Head was labeled incorrectly as Cape Foulweather on maps, and the lighthouse's intended location was also mislabeled as such. When the map error was corrected some years later, the myth arose that the lighthouse was supposed to have been placed at the actual Cape Foulweather. The details of the land purchase, surveying records and geographical description make it clear, however, that the lighthouse was in fact placed exactly where intended. As with many old lighthouses, this one carries tales of a ghost that walks the spiral steps of the tower. And indeed there has been a death inside the tower itself. In the 1920's, the head keeper and his family headed to Newport one evening, leaving assistant keeper Frank Story to light the lantern. This assistant was filling in for assistant, Herbert Higgins, who was sick. Upon reaching Newport, the head keeper saw that the light had not been lit, and hurried back. It was found that Mr. Story was drunk, and had failed to light the lantern. Although extremely ill, Higgins tried to do it instead, but during his attempt he collapsed, and died in the tower. Thereafter, the guilt-ridden Story always entered the tower accompanied by a bulldog, in fear of retribution from Higgins' ghost. Today, only the lighthouse itself remains at Yaquina Head. A parking lot stands where there was once a collection of buildings, including a keeper's dwelling and workshop. The original dwelling was torn down soon after the Coast Guard took possession of the light in the late 1930's, and the Coast Guard erected two buildings for its personnel in its place. These buildings were finally dismantled in 1984. The lighthouse was fully restored by the Coast Guard in 1993 as part of the Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area, which now receives hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. The original fixed first order Fresnel lens remains in the tower, although it now contains an automated light. Tours of the tower are led in the summer, and the new Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area Interpretive Center opened in May, 1998.

The Cape Meares Lighthouse began as a secluded outpost to which supplies had to be brought by boat from Tillamook Bay, but now the site gets thousands of visitors each month as park of Cape Meares State Park. A small, 38-foot tower encased in iron was built on the headland in 1889, nearly 200 feet above the ocean's roar. It was first illuminated on New Year's Day, 1890, and five years later an attached workroom was added to the structure. Keepers of the light and their families lived in one of two identical houses situated about 1000 feet from the lighthouse, up a long, steady grade. Two oil houses and a barn were also on the property. The original optic of the lighthouse was a first order Fresnel built in Paris in 1887, with eight sides and four huge bull's eye prisms, along with a red panel on the outside of the lens to enable a red flash every minute from its steady white light. As with many early lighthouses, the lens rotated by a system of weights, much like a grandfather clock. Electricity finally eliminated the need for the weights in 1934. Full automation came to the station in 1963, with the construction of a modern exposed beacon to replace the old lens, which still rests unused in the tower. Even the workroom adjacent to the tower was removed during this period, but before the tower itself could be torn down, local citizens intervened. The property was given over to Tillamook County, and eventually to the State of Oregon for use as a park. The period of neglect during the 1960's and early 1970's was not kind, the keepers dwellings were so deteriorated from squatters and vandalism that they had to be torn down, and the park's visitor parking lot now sits on the site. The lighthouse itself suffered during this time as well - rust developed freely on the tower's iron sides, and the four bull's eye prisms were stolen from the lens. Better times were on the way by the late 70's, and in 1978 a new replica workroom was built adjacent to the tower to replace the one torn down 15 years earlier. The restored tower was finally reopened in 1980, and the workroom serves as a gift shop. Three of the four missing lens prisms have since been recovered as well. One was found in a Portland drug raid in 1984. In 1986 a magazine article pleaded for the return of the rest, and within weeks, two more found their way into the hands of authorities: one was left at the Tillamook County Pioneer Museum, and another on the doorstep of an assistant park ranger at nearby Cape Lookout State Park. The prisms will eventually be reinstalled in the lens.

Barely over 20 years old, the newest of Oregon lighthouses sits on Cape Perpetua - the only lighthouse to ever stand there. Its tower is a replica of the 1898 Fiddle Reef Lighthouse, which once stood on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. In the lantern room is an acrylic lens, once used at Solander Island Lighthouse off Vancouver Island. Cleft of the Rock was built in 1976 by noted lighthouse buff, author, and former Coast Guardsman Jim Gibbs. It is also his home, and is therefore off-limits to the public. Encompassed within the tower and residence are numerous artifacts from a number of light stations, including Point Sur, Tillamook Rock (where Gibbs once served), Desdemona Sands, Yaquina Head, and Heceta Head. The Coast Guard's Light List officially recognized Cleft of the Rock as a private aid to navigation in 1979, 201 years after the discovery of Cape Perpetua by Captain James Cook.

Lighthouse Construction

Lighthouses come in many shapes and sizes. Twelve lighthouses were built in the United States before the Constitution transferred lighthouse control from the states to the federal government. No two were constructed from the same set of plans and all were built from local materials. Therefore, it is no surprise that no two were alike. The majority of the surviving lighthouses are land based; close to a fourth have foundations built in the water. Lighthouses have been built on land, in the water, on islands, on top of ledges and cliffs, on breakwaters and piers, on caissons, and a least five are on fortwalls. As with most construction, technological change influenced the building of every lighthouse.

Wood is one of the earliest lighthouse construction materials. Towers built before the nineteenth century were built of wood or rubblestone materials that were readily available. Few early wooden towers survived because of their susceptibility to fire.

Masonry towers were constructed of rubblestone, cut stone (dressed stone), brick, and concrete. The oldest of all standing US lighthouses is a masonry tower, it stands 85-foot-tall and was built in 1764, of cut stone. The preferred foundation for masonry lighthouses was bedrock but a method using wooden piles driven into the substrate and topped with timbers and/or rubblestone had to be used in regions, such as the coastal plain, where bedrock was lacking. Towers of stone and brick were typically built in the form of the frustum of a cone (a conical or pyramidal shape left by cutting off the top portion at a plane parallel to the base). Masonry walls of lighthouses are typically several feet thick at the base and decrease in thickness upward, with heights ranging from 30 feet to the tallest lighthouse in the United States at 197 feet. The base of the tower was made thicker to support the ever increasing weight from above and to make it more stable. Cut or dressed stone, and later brick, permitted construction of taller and stronger towers because the weight could be more evenly distributed.

Brick-- Over one half of surviving light stations use masonry construction; brick being the most common masonry material. Brick was first used as a lining material and later became a popular building material in areas, especially in the South, where local stone was not readily available. In the 1850s, the first "tall towers," towers over 150 feet, were constructed of brick and held first-order lenses.

Cast-Iron Plate-- Cast iron was lighter than stone or brick, relatively inexpensive, capable of being shaped, watertight, and had a slow rate of deterioration. The first cast-iron lighthouse was an octagonal tower built in 1803. Cast-iron plates were prefabricated offsite, numbered, and easily assembled into towers on site. The cast-iron plates were either segments of a cone or a flat surface, depending on the design chosen. The plates have flanges on all four sides which were fastened together by bolts. The interior of the tower was often lined with brick for added stability and insulation. In areas where shifting and eroding beaches were present, cast-iron-plate towers were designed so they could be disassembled and re-erected as needed.

Skeletal (Iron and Steel) -- Onshore skeletal towers were built first of cast iron and later steel. They generally consisted of a central vertical stairway cylinder and four to eight slanting structural skeletal peripheral columns and were especially adapted to locations where a relatively light pile structure was required in mud or sand. This type of lighthouse structure was prefabricated offsite and reassembled onsite. Skeletal towers were often standardized. The most common form was four-legged tapered towers with diagonal bracing available in 10-, 20-, 30-, and 40-foot heights.

Reinforced Concrete-- Concrete towers reinforced with steel began to replace brick masonry towers at the beginning of the 20th century; the first was constructed in 1908. Steel in concrete structures provided the tensile properties that concrete alone lacks. Most major reinforced concrete towers are found on the West Coast where they are best adapted to the dangers of earthquake damage. A series of art-modern reinforced concrete lighthouses were built along the Alaska coast in the 1920s and 1930s, replacing earlier deteriorated wooden structures.

Local Lights

The rugged Pacific Coast Highway winds it’s way up Oregon’s shorelines from sandy beaches to rocky cliffs. Along the way are many lighthouses of various historic record and architectural heritage. If you have a passion for lighthouses or just for the beautiful Oregon coastline it’s worth taking a tour of our local lights. Following is a list of lighthouses starting in the southern end of Oregon and ending near Tillamook. For more information and a picture of each lighthouse click on the underlined name to link to a web site featuring these magnificent beauties.

Cape Blanco is the southernmost lighthouse it’s located in the Cape Blanco state park near the town of Sixes. Twenty miles north, near the river port of Bandon, is the long-abandoned but beautifully-restored light at Coquille River, with a Victorian Italiante style that is unique among lighthouses. Next light along the route is Cape Arago, which guards the entrance to Coos Bay. Just south of Reedsport is a light not to be missed--Umpqua River Light. The attraction here is a mesmerizing red and white fresnel lens. North of Umpqua, past the town of Florence is the jewel of Oregon's coast ... Heceta Head Light. This light and it's incredible surroundings are like walking into a postcard. When you recover from the excitement of Heceta Head, continue on up to Newport, and the two Yaquina lights. Yaquina Bay Light was built first, but only three years later a much larger tower was built nearby at Yaquina Head, and the first light no longer had a reason to shine. Last light on this tour is Cape Meares Light, no longer active, but worth a visit to examine a large, first-order fresnel lens up close.

References

http://www.randomb.com/orelighthouse/ 

http://members.aol.com/fairyfellr/index.html http://members.aol.com/fairyfellr/index.html 

 http://www.cr.nps.gov/maritime/constype/constype.htm Ralph Eshelman, "Lighthouse Construction Types," CRM Bulletin, Volume 20, No. 8 (Published by the National Park Service's Cultural Resources Program); Draft National Register of Historic Places Multiple Property Documentation form for "Light Stations of the United States;" and the National Maritime Initiative's Inventory of Historic Light Stations                                  http://www.cr.nps.gov/maritime/constype/constype.htm   http://lighthousegetaway.com/lights/oregon.html