As promised earlier, for the next three weeks the Lighthouse of the Week post will feature lighthouses which appeared in my Lighthouses in the Fog post. So this week we will start off with the Mark Abbott Memorial Lighthouse in Santa Cruz, California. The lighthouse is named for a young surfer who died tragically in 1965 at the age of 18, and was funded by his parents.
The lighthouse is also the location of the Santa Cruz Surfing Museum.
I couldn't find a Web site specifically about the lighthouse, but I did find a page about Lighthouse Point, where it is located. And it's pretty interesting.
Lighthouse Point: A history
The previous lighthouse, appropriately named the Santa Cruz lighthouse, was taken down in 1948. Here's the page's story about how the present-day lighthouse came to be built.
OUT OF SADNESS: A NEW LIGHTHOUSENow, more specifically, here's the specifics about this lighthouse (from the Lighthouse Directory, of course):
The beacon might still be the only light here today, if not for the tragic death of a local boy named Mark Abbott. On a Sunday morning in February 1965, Mark left for the beach with his friends. He went body surfing and never returned.
His body was later found floating motionless in the water.
Amazingly, Mark’s parents, Chuck and Esther Abbott, were able to turn their grief at losing a child into something posi- tive for the community. With the support of the city council, the community, and a $20,000 life insurance payout, they built the Mark Abbott Memorial Lighthouse. The new lighthouse, complete with a rotating light, was opened and dedicated in November 1967. The new lighthouse honored Mark, but the Abbotts made sure it honored even more than their son. A bronze plaque inside the lighthouse reads: “This lighthouse is further dedicated to all our youth whose lives, through fate or misadventure, are terminated before realizing their true potential. May their spirits find new dimension in the unknown horizons that await us all.”
"1967 (station established 1869). Active (privately maintained); focal plane 60 ft (18 m); white flash every 5 s. 39 ft (12 m) square brick tower attached to a 1-story brick museum. The building is unpainted red brick; lantern and gallery painted white. The lantern and 5th order Fresnel lens (1890) were transferred from the Oakland Harbor Light (see below), but the badly deteriorated lantern was replaced in 1996. ... In December 2008 the Santa Cruz City Council voted to close the museum as a cost-saving measure, but it was rescued by contributions from supporters. In 2011 the Coast Guard installed a flashing green light, which was much criticized by lighthouse supporters. In 2013 the city assumed control of the light and the 5th order Fresnel lens was installed, restoring the original rotating white light. The lighthouse may be endangered by erosion of the cliff on which it stands; El Niño waves were expanding a cave below the lighthouse in the spring of 2016."
Four pictures are below.
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