Pigeon Point Lighthouse

The Carrier Pigeon, a 175-foot long clipper ship with a gilded pigeon as her figurehead, was launched from the shipyards at Bath, Maine in the fall of 1852 and left Boston on January 28, 1853 for her maiden voyage around Cape Horn to San Francisco. On the morning of June 6, the vessel was spotted off Santa Cruz, but visibility worsened and shrouded the ship in a thick blanket of fog as the day progressed. That evening, the captain, believing he was a good distance from land, steered his vessel shoreward. Before land was sighted, the Carrier Pigeon struck rocks and quickly began taking on water. The captain and crew made it safely to shore, but the ship was a loss. After offloading a good portion of the supplies, the vessel, valued at $54,000 and still stranded on the rocks, was sold for $1,500. Since the time of the wreck, the point of land closest to the rocks that claimed the Carrier Pigeon has been called Pigeon Point. Previously, the point had been known as Punta de las Ballenas (Point of the Whales) as a whaling station was located nearby.

At least three more ships were lost near the point in the 1860s, prompting the editor of the San Mateo County Gazette to write the following in 1868. "Pigeon Point is the most extensive promontory on the coast south of the Golden Gate, and which point seems especially adapted for a light-house. No other one place on the Pacific Coast has proved so fatal to navigators as this locality, and it behooves those most interested in maritime affairs on the coast as well as in the East to bring their influence to bear immediately upon the government officials, and never relax their efforts until a light-house is erected at Pigeon Point."

After a struggle to secure property at the point, Congress appropriated a sum of $90,000 for the Pigeon Point Lighthouse in March of 1871. The fog signal and Victorian fourplex were completed first, and the steam whistle, with four second blasts separated alternately by seven and forty-five seconds, was fired up for the first time on September 10, 1871. Torrential rains and difficulty in assembling the spiral staircase, which had been fabricated by Nutting & Son in San Francisco, contributed to delays in completing the tower. After the lantern room was in place atop the tower, the delicate lens was assembled inside, and the light was exhibited for the first time on November 15, 1872, over fourteen months after the fog signal was completed. At sunset that evening, Keeper J. W. Patterson started the brass clockwork ticking, ignited the lard oil in the lamp, and soon the lighthouse according to Patterson was "exchanging winks and blinks with its neighbor of the Farallone. For further history on this and other lighthouses please visit Lighthouse Friends

Once per year at the Pigeon Point Lighthouse they shut down the modern light and switch over to the 5 kerosene lamps and fresnel lens of the original, as it was 135 years ago. For the first 5 minutes they leave it static to indulge all of the photographers who turn out and want to capture this once in a lifetime shot. Below is one such photographer's embrace of the moment.