Point Reyes is considered to be one of the West's most dangerous navigational obstacles. The Point regularly endures 40 mph winds with occasional guts up to 133 mph. It reportedly stays shrouded in fog 2,100 hours annually. After the completion of the lighthouse in 1870 one keeper recorded 7 days and eight hours of fog without relief. It took 24, 640 lbs of coal in that one week to keep the fog signal blowing.
Can you image hauling 24,640 lbs of coal down 638 steps (the keepers quarters was located at the top of the cliff) in just one week? I wonder how many trips it would take? But they didn't just haul the coal down, remember they to climb or crawl back up 638 steps each time. Yes, I did say crawl - sometimes they had to crawl to keep from being blown off the steps by the high winds. Needless to say, Point Reyes Lighthouse was one of the least envied service posts that a lighthouse keeper could be assigned. Have I mentioned by admiration for the people who worked in such harsh conditions to keep the lights burning in order to protect so many others?
Although this lighthouse is no longer in use as a navigational aide, one of the fabulous things about it is that it still houses the original two-ton, first-order Fresnel lens that was installed in 1870. A "first-order" lens was considered the most powerful. Lens were assigned to lighthouses according to their power and ability to push the light out to sea and the danger that loomed at the location of the lighthouse itself.
The Point Reyes lens consists of twenty-four bull’s-eye panels held in place by a brass frame. It revolved at the rate of one revolution every two minutes, producing a white flash once every five seconds as its signature. The flash could be seen more than 24 miles out at sea. To see more Point Reyes pictures, click on the picture of the lens below.
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