Digest>Archives> August 2001

California’s Point Sur Lighthouse Lantern Gleaming Like New

By Jeremy D'Entremont

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The Point Sur Light as it looked in 1933. Photo ...

This year a total restoration of the lantern room at Point Sur Lighthouse was completed, thanks to the persistence of a nonprofit group called the Central Coast Lighthouse Keepers, along with California State Parks. This work, carried out over six months by International Chimney Corporation, followed on the heels of the successful restoration of the station’s barn, as well as its carpenter and blacksmith shop.

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Shown here is the Point Sur Lighthouse and the ...

The lantern room on the 1889 tower was showing its age, with significant rust and corrosion that was destroying important support elements. The lantern had developed leaks, and the ventilator ball was marred by a bullet hole. The National Maritime Heritage Grant Program helped start the restoration process with a $25,000 grant, and the Community Foundation of Monterey County chipped in an additional $13,740. The majority of the $309,000 renovation was paid for by the Central Coast Lighthouse Keepers through tour fees, gift shop sales, memberships, donations, matching grants and the “Buy a Prism” project. The mission of this nonprofit group is to promote awareness, knowledge and understanding of the lighthouses of California’s Central Coast and aid their preservation.

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The newly restored lighthouse. Photo by Gary ...
Photo by: Gary Nelson

The design work for the restoration was done by Robert Carver of Carver and Schicketanz Architects of Carmel, California. International Chimney Corporation (ICC) of Buffalo, New York, best known for their dramatic moves of lighthouses at Cape Hatteras and elsewhere, removed lead paint from the lantern, recast some of the parts, patched other pieces with a titanium bonding agent, and cleaned and coated the brass. The foreman on the job was Ron Uplinger. ICC also repainted the short cylindrical tower below the lantern room with a special paint that cures by drawing moisture out of the metal itself. The tower was painted black, which is the correct color for the 1929 period to which the lighthouse is being restored.

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Freshly restored, the grand lighthouse shines ...
Photo by: Gary Nelson

International Chimney’s Joe Jakubik says that Point Sur “has got to be the most beautiful landscape I’ve seen anywhere.” Jakubik and other International Chimney personnel enjoyed working on their first west coast lighthouse restoration. The beautiful location is also very exposed to the elements, however. The lighthouse “has had a constant battle with the fog and wind,” Jakubik notes.

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The rust underneath the gallery was starting to ...

The steep location of the light station made transporting materials difficult when the buildings were first erected, and the same problem created some difficulty for the restoration. Larger materials had to be broken down and loaded on a pickup truck, the only vehicle that could get near the lighthouse. This added much time to the project.

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The bullet hole shown here was repaired during ...

The powerful first order Fresnel lens at Point Sur was removed from the tower in the 1970s. It now graces the Monterey Maritime Museum on Custom House Plaza near Fishermen’s Wharf in Monterey. In 1992 a $500,000 grant from the Thomas Dodd Sr. and Anita M. Dodd Fund of the Community Foundation for Monterey County paid for the lens to be relocated and reunited with its turning mechanism. The lens and mechanism weigh a combined 9,570 pounds and stand 18 feet high.

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Point Sur Light Station is an unusual case of a station with all of its original buildings still intact, including two keepers’ houses. The first major restoration project was the carpenter/blacksmith shop, completed in 1999 after two years of work. The building had been closed since 1974 when the Coast Guard automated the light. The building had to be treated for termites, and much rotten wood in the floors, supports and walls had to be replaced. Some windows were replaced; the new ones were custom made to match the original ones. The roof was reshingled and the entire building was repainted to look as it did in 1929.

A restoration of the station’s barn was finished last summer. In addition, a replica water tower was finished in early 2001. It holds cellular antennae, which enabled the removal of an unsightly and non-historic pole.

Three-hour walking tours, led by volunteers, are available at the lighthouse station. The tours involve walking on less than a mile of paved road with a rise in elevation of 360 feet and two stairways of 40 to 50 steps each.

If you would like more information on the Central Coast Lighthouse Keepers, you can contact them at: P.O. Box 223014, Carmel, CA 93922 or visit them on the Web at www.pointsur.org

This story appeared in the August 2001 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.

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