Departing for Lighthouse Tour

Since I was a child I’ve been fascinated with lighthouses. The isolation and romance associated with them has always been a draw to me; especially the lighthouse off Tillamook Head. Since I first spotted it on vacation in 1990 I’ve been driven by an urge to land and examine it; to try and imagine what the lighthouse keepers would have felt on those lonely storm tossed nights trapped off the coast.

Tomorrow we (Jason Goldstein and I, with Brad Miller our photographer joining us later in the trip) depart for our double light house tour. First stop will be ‘Terrible Tilly’. It’s doubtful that we’ll be able to make a landing as I understand it has reverted back to a rookery for sea-lions, but we should be able to get some excellent footage from it’s base. Our second stop will be off the Washington coast and the Destruction Island Lighthouse. We made an exploratory stop some years back, but weren’t able to fully document the lighthouse. We won’t have access to computers to update our trip, but will call in updates to be posted as audio blogs. Here’s a brief rundown on the lighthouses, with more details to follow when we return.

Tillamook Lighthouse
Nineteen miles south of the Columbia River and one mile west of the Oregon coastline, surrounded by a turbulent sea, stands the rough and crag like Tillamook Rock Light Station. The top of the rock is 71 feet above the level of the sea and the light tower is 62 feet tall; thus putting the light beacon 133 feet high. The water at the base of the rock is so deep, whales often swim against the rock to scrape the barnacles off their bellies. Eight-foot swells at the base of the Rock make it nearly impossible to land.

Life on "Terrible Tilly," as the rock came to be known, was difficult at best, although the lighthouse Service-and later Coast Guard- personnel faithfully manned the solitary sentinel for more than three quarters of a century. Ultimately, the immense costs of ongoing maintenance forced the government to close the station and replace the light with an automated buoy anchored 1,000 feet to the northwest. The changeover took place 10 September 1957. Currently the lens and logbook can be view in the Astoria Maritime Museum.

Destruction Island Lighthouse
On January 1, 1892, at 4:26 p.m., lighthouse keeper Christian Zauner lights the five wicks of the Destruction Island lighthouse's first-order Fresnel lens for the very first time. The lighthouse is located on Destruction Island, the only offshore island along Washington's outer coast. The island is located about three miles from the mainland, about 50 miles south of Cape Flattery, in Jefferson County. It is one of two American lighthouses alerting mariners to the entrance to Puget Sound (the Strait of Juan de Fuca begins about 50 miles to the north).

The wreck of the Cassandra Adams stressed need for the light and fog signal at Destruction Island. En route from San Francisco to Tacoma, the Tacoma Mill-owned bark encountered thick fog and struck a reef near the island at 8:15 a.m. on August 10, 1888. Those aboard did not see the island until their ship was hard aground. Heavy seas soon tore her to pieces.