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On April 23, 2004, Secretary of the Interior Gale A. Norton and other officials gathered at spectacular Point Sur State Historic Park to celebrate the transfer of the Point Sur Light Station from the U.S. Coast Guard to the California Department of Parks and Recreation under the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000.
The partnership of CCLK and CA State Parks has already raised more than $2 million for the ongoing maintenance and restoration of the 1889 lighthouse and other structures. “In this case, California State Parks and its nonprofit partner certainly have proven to be the best possible stewards of Point Sur,” Secretary Norton said at the ceremony.
The first order Fresnel lens from Point Sur was removed in 1978 and is now on display at the Maritime Museum of Monterey. A $280,000 restoration of the lighthouse’s lantern room was completed in 2001, and the remainder of the lighthouse was restored in 2002 at a cost of $183,000. The cost was mostly raised by CCLK through tour fees, gift shop sales and various other forms of fundraising. In recent years a carpenter shop and a barn on the site have also been restored, and a replica of a 1907 water tower has been constructed.
“This is the only complete turn-of-the-century light station open to the public in California,” Secretary Norton pointed out in her address. “It preserves a sense of the drama and isolation of the chain of sixty California lighthouses begun in 1852 and managed by the Coast Guard until recently.”
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