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The Old Point Loma Lighthouse is a reminder of a different time: of sailing ships and oil lamps and the men and women who day after day and night after night faithfully tended the coastal lights that guided mariners.
In 1851, a year after California entered the Union, the U.S. Coastal Survey selected the headland a the entrance to San Diego Harbor as a site for a navigational aid. The crest seemed like the right location: it stood 422 feet above sea level, overlooking the bay and the ocean, and a lighthouse there could serve as as both a harbor light and a coastal beacon.
Construction began 3 years later. Workers carved sandstone from the hillside for the walls and salvaged floor tiles from the ruins of an old Spanish fort. A rolled tin roof, brick tower and an iron and brass housing topped the squat, thick-walled building. By late summer 1854 the structure was completed at a cost of $30,000 considerably more than the original estimate. But it was more than a year before the lighting apparatus, a 5 foot, 3rd order Fresnal lens, the best available technology, arrived from France and was installed. At dusk on November 15, 1855, the keeper climbed the winding stairs and lit the oil lamp for the first time. As a result of its height above sea level, in clear weather its light was visible at sea for 39 miles. For the next 36 years, except on foggy nights, it welcomed sailors to the San Diego Harbor.
The light had a relatively short life as the seemingly ideal location concealed a serious flaw. Fog and low clouds, common to the area in the late spring and summer months, often obscured the light. On March 23, 1891, the keeper extinguished the light for the last time. Boarding up the lighthouse, he moved his family and belongings into the New Point Loma lighthouse at the bottom of the hill, much closer to sea level and well below the fog and low hanging clouds.
Today the old lighthouse, part of the Cabrillo National Monument, is refurbished and open to visitors, a sentinel from a vanished past.