AVILA BEACH, Calif. (CN) — Inside the picturesque Point San Luis Lighthouse, docent and author Kathy Mastako leads her group of eight visitors to the seaside Victorian’s kitchen and launches into her familiar spiel.
“I’ll invite you to suspend disbelief for just a couple of moments and time travel back with me to 1890,” she said.
As she described the lighthouse’s first head keeper, Henry Wilson Young, his wife and their four children, it’s easy to picture the family sitting in this cozy room, with wood floors, a coal-burning stove and spectacular views of the Pacific Ocean. And, because fantasy is a big part of the tour’s allure, it’s not difficult to picture yourself sitting at the table, watching whales breach near the Avila Beach shoreline as coffee brews on the stove.
“I think people see it as a very romantic place,” Mastako told Courthouse News. “And I think people do wonder, ‘What would it be like to live here?’”
Built to aid maritime traffic, today, California’s lighthouses represent a significant tourist draw, which explains the state’s $16 million dedication to renovating the photogenic lighthouse at Pigeon Point Light Station State Historic Park.
“We estimate about 200,000 visitors a year stop at the park because we are about 50 miles south of San Francisco and 30 miles north of Santa Cruz, right up along Highway 1,” said Julie Barrow, special projects coordinator with California State Parks. “And many of our visitors are international visitors who make a circuit.”
The history of the lighthouse dates back to 285 B.C., when the Pharos of Alexandria was built on an island at the entrance to the city’s harbor, according to the Lighthouse Preservation Society. As sea travel increased in the 17th century, the number of lighthouses expanded significantly, their powerful beacons warning mariners of rocks, reefs and currents.
In the United States prior to the mid-19th century, there was a reluctance to spend money on lighthouses, said Jeremy D’Entremont, a historian with the U.S. Lighthouse Society. But as commerce grew in the fledgling nation, so too did a need for safe sea travel.
The creation of the U.S. Lighthouse Board in 1852 launched a new era of lighthouse construction.
“In the early days, it was the merchants that were largely responsible for getting them built,” said D’Entremont, author of several books including the recent “Lighthouses of New Hampshire.”
“They really started building better lighthouses in the second half of the 1800s,” D’Entremont said.
California can’t claim the first lighthouse (Boston, 1716) or the most lighthouses (Michigan, 129). But it does have the largest tourism economy ($150 billion yearly), and its roughly 35 lighthouses inspire photographers, nature lovers, and historians.
“We have a lot of visitors who are lighthouse aficionados, who want to see all the California lighthouses they can,” Barrow, with California State Parks, said.
When lighthouses were first built in the United States, the lights were illuminated sunset to sunrise with wicks, usually burning whale oil or kerosene.
“It had to be lit every night,” Barrow said. “Somebody had to be there to do that, and they had to maintain the flame to keep it burning cleanly and brightly so it was visible.”
Many lighthouses also included fog stations, which created steam whistles that also helped captains navigate.
“Pigeon Point is considered a light station because it had a lighthouse, it had a fog signal building, and it had keepers quarters,” Barrow said.
While some keepers and their families lived solitary lives on rugged and remote locations, several lighthouses, especially those with fog stations, required multiple keepers and their families on site.
