When I was looking for another in this thematic series (have you guessed the theme yet? Did you even know there was a theme?) and found this one, I was stunned I hadn't featured it before now. This is the very very famous Point Reyes Lighthouse in Marin County, California. It's famous because a) it's in a stunning location, b) it's in Marin County, one of California's most stunningly scenic counties and also one of its most visited, due to its proximity to San Francisco, and well, wine, and c) because it's on a stunningly gorgeous national seashore.
(Did I use the word "stunning" enough up there?)
Also -- it's the windiest place on the Pacific Coast and the second foggiest place on the entire continent of North America, according to the National Park Service. (Most foggiest is Grand Banks, Newfoundland, which basically isn't on the North American continent, it's in the ocean, so Point Reyes would actually appear to be the leader on land.)
It took three years to get built and they had to blast a flat place on the side of an oceanside cliff to put it in the best location.
So yeah, it's famous.
The basics about it are these:
- Built 1867-1870, retired from active service in 1975, with the warning light duties taken over by an automatic tower lower down on the cliff.
- Restored and reopened in 2019 after $5.7 million in renovations. And of course as of this writing, it's closed (it has been converted to a museum).
- The tower is only 35 feet high, but when the actual structure is nearly 300 feet above the ocean surface, a big tall tower seems hardly necessary.
- Visitors get to it by going down 308 stairs, which are closed when it is too windy. And apparently too windy is not an uncommon condition.
So that's about all we need to know. Below are pictures and a video. The lighthouse appears at the beginning of the video, so it's not necessary to watch the whole thing, except you might want to because the whole area is quite stunning.
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| This is a clue to the theme |
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