Piedras Blancas Light Station

In 1872 the Lighthouse Board authorized a light at Point Piedras Blancas. White rocks, for the guano-covered stacks offshore. It stood complete in 1875, and Captain Thorndyke kept it for the first thirty years.

A storm in 1948 took its top off, which is why it looks decapitated. It is a fine tower still, and there are tours some mornings. You can go inside the gates on a tour, and I recommend it.

The Bureau of Land Management keeps the station now, and on tour mornings a small group walks the point for two hours, through the fog signal building, the keepers' grounds and the tower itself, with the seals and the sea birds on the rocks below. Meet at the old motel a mile and a half north of the light, not at the gate, and book ahead, because the groups are small. In spring the whole point is a carpet of wildflowers.

Captain Thorndyke's son was born in the lighthouse. Supplies came once a year by lighthouse tender from San Francisco, and the neighboring ranches supplied the rest. The light was kerosene, five wicks behind French prisms, seen twenty-six miles out from the mast of a sailing ship, and it turned by clockwork: cabled weights the keeper cranked back up every hour of the night.