Barb Gonzalez / For The BulletinBuilt in 1870, the Cape Blanco Light, on Oregon’s westernmost point, is the state’s oldest standing lighthouse. The light in the tower, which rises 59 feet atop a 197-foot cliff, was not replaced by an automated light until 1980.

A lighthouse can evoke thoughts of tedium and isolation punctuated by sudden drama.

That notion may not have been far wrong in the 19th century. Certainly, the life of a Pacific Northwest lighthouse keeper and his family was one of seclusion. Lights were built in remote locations, far from urban centers or even established roads, in places where they could warn maritime traffic of hazards that might be unseen, especially during fogs and squalls.

Self-sufficiency was paramount. Food and basic supplies were not always replenished on schedule. The keeper was a jack-of-all-trades, continually doing maintenance chores and tending a hardy garden when weather allowed. Most importantly, he climbed up and down the steel, spiraling tower steps to keep the lantern fueled with kerosene, the wicks trimmed and the lens clean, so that when hurricane-force winds raged in from the Pacific, he could drop everything else to keep passing ships off the rocks.

Before the end of the 19th century, most lanterns had been replaced by elaborate French-made Fresnel lenses, whose powerful beacons could be seen as many as 20 miles out to sea. These were often the only warnings to prevent ships from wrecking on shoals, reefs or rocks. Each lighthouse had a distinctive flash pattern to alert sea captains of their approach. Their charts would tell the ships to remain miles out to sea.

Eleven lighthouses were built along the Oregon and southern Washington coastline beginning in 1856. In some cases, later structures replaced earlier lights that had fallen into disrepair. Designated by the former U.S. Lighthouse Board, designed and constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers, they eventually fell under the control of the U.S. Coast Guard. By the mid-20th century, automated lights had made the historic lighthouse keeper irrelevant.

Each of these lighthouses is now on the National Register of Historic Places; all but two are open to the public. Most are a part of the state park system; one (Yaquina Head) is administered by the Bureau of Land Management. Many of them offer guided tours of the light tower and interpretive displays that enable visitors to imagine what life might have been like in these lonely perches as gale-force winds howled all around.

South to north, traveling up U.S. Highway 101, these are Oregon’s nine historic lighthouses:

Cape Blanco

The oldest standing lighthouse on the Oregon Coast stands on the state’s westernmost point about 4 miles north of Port Orford. A turnoff points visitors to Cape Blanco State Park, which includes a spacious campground and hiking trails.

Rising 59 feet atop a 197-foot cliff, the light was established in 1870; it was not replaced by an automated light until 1980. It protected vessels that carried lumber and gold from communities along the southern Oregon Coast. Its keepers were dedicated: James Langlois and James Hughes held their posts for 42 and 38 years, respectively, and raised families. Hughes’ home overlooking the Sixes River, a couple of miles west of the lighthouse, is open for tours along with the lighthouse and adjacent gift shop.

Coquille River

It took nearly five years to build it, but the Coquille River Light was completed in 1896 to guide mariners across a dangerous bar outside the town of Bandon. It didn’t keep every ship from a mishap, but when the schooner Moro struck the bar in 1897, and the Advance in 1905, the cargo was at least salvaged.

The lighthouse — its beacon atop a 40-foot, octagonal tower — was decommissioned in 1939 after the river channel was improved and an automated light installed. In the late 1970s, Oregon State Parks and the Army Corps of Engineers restored the building as an interpretive center. New restoration efforts began in 2007 with the expansion of Bullards Beach State Park, whose grounds surround the building.

Cape Arago

One of two Oregon lighthouses not open to the public, the 44-foot-high Cape Arago Light (illuminated in 1934) is the third to occupy a tiny islet off Gregory Point, 100 feet above the ocean. Two predecessors, built in 1866 and 1908, were victims of weather and wave erosion on this reef-riddled shoreline, near the southern approach to Coos Bay.

The entry road to the Cape Arago Light is guarded by a chain-link fence controlled by the Coast Guard, a short distance west of the harbor town of Charleston, off State Route 540 (the Cape Arago Highway). There are viewpoints approaching Sunset Bay State Park. Campers can often hear its distinctive foghorn during the evening and early-morning hours.

Umpqua River

The first lighthouse to overlook the mouth of the Umpqua River, 6 miles south of Reedsport near Winchester Bay, didn’t last long. Built in 1857, its sandy foundation fell victim to waves and wind within four years. But it had been placed on the river’s North Spit, and when Coos Bay was deigned to be more conducive to commercial shipping than the Umpqua, the Lighthouse Board saw no reason to hurry to rebuild this one.

They finally did so decades later, allocating funds in 1888 and completing the building at the end of 1894. This time, the 61-foot tower was built on a 100-foot ridge above the South Jetty. The Umpqua Lighthouse State Park, with its extensive campground near Lake Marie, is nearby. The beacon here sends out a distinctive red-and-white automated flash.

Heceta Head

Occupying a prominent headland between Florence and Yachats, this lighthouse is one of the most photographed sights on the Oregon Coast. Rising high above a beach at the mouth of Cape Creek, just north of Sea Lion Caves, its 56-foot tower, 205 feet above the Pacific, has sent a beacon seaward since 1894. It is still rated the strongest light on the Oregon Coast.

Visitors may park beside the beach and hike a half-mile up the side of Heceta Head — named for an early Spanish navigator, Don Bruno de Heceta — to the light. Isolated until 1932, when the coast highway was completed, it switched to an automatic bulb with the arrival of electricity two years later.

Halfway up the trail, the assistant light keeper’s house, built in 1893, has been converted to a popular bed-and-breakfast inn. This is the site of one of Oregon’s most famous ghost stories: It is said the spirit of a distraught mother still haunts an upper room from which she flung herself after her daughter’s tragic death on the rocks below.

Yaquina Bay

In service for only three years, from 1871 to 1874, the Yaquina Bay lighthouse today has some of the finest historical interpretive exhibits of any Oregon lighthouse. Open year-round on the north side of the Yaquina River mouth, its memorabilia-laden rooms, with furnishings on loan from the Oregon Historical Society, are a short walk from the Newport Bayfront.

The Yaquina Bay Light was eclipsed by the Yaquina Head Light a few miles north. For many years, it was abandoned and nearly torn down. Finally, in 1974, it was fully restored by Oregon State Parks. Its light was relit in 1996 as an aid to Coast Guard navigation. The lens is positioned 42 feet above the ground, 161 feet above the nearby ocean.

Yaquina Head

Yaquina Head’s 93-foot tower, standing 162 feet above sea level, is the tallest on the Oregon Coast. Lit since 1873, and still an aid to coastal navigation, it offers one of the best tours on the coast. Volunteer keepers will take visitors up the winding staircase to the original 1,000-watt Fresnel lens, from which vantage point there are marvelous coastal views.

Over the years, high winds, storms and lightning have battered the keepers’ dwellings at the foot of the lighthouse, but the tower remains a sturdy sentinel. It stands as part of the BLM’s Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area, the hub of a 100-acre headland with a fine interpretive center, seabird nesting viewpoints, seasonal whale watching and expansive tidepools.

Cape Meares

Cape Meares’ 38-foot tower, 217 feet above the Pacific near the mouth of Tillamook Bay, is the shortest on the Oregon Coast. Its Fresnel lens was first illuminated in 1890; that light remains in the tower, even after an automated light was installed in another building east of the tower in 1963.

The lighthouse closed for some time after a 2010 incident in which vandals caused $50,000 damage to the lamp and structure; ongoing repairs to the northern portion of the Three Capes Scenic Route have turned the access road into a one-way route from Oceanside.

Numerous trails surround the lighthouse, which is located a quarter mile from the parking area through a dense spruce-and-hemlock forest. Inland from the light, a shorter trail leads to the so-called “Octopus Tree,” a giant Sitka spruce, 50 feet around, with six separate major branches reaching skyward.

Tillamook Rock

Forget about driving to the Tillamook Rock Light. The nearest you’ll get by car is Ecola State Park, on the north side of Cannon Beach. By foot, the Oregon Coast Trail between Cannon Beach and Seaside offers the most direct views.

Once named “Terrible Tilly” because of its exposure to violent storm waves, this light is about 1¼ miles directly west of Tillamook Head. It has a 62-foot tower that stands 133 feet above the sea on an isle of solid basalt rock. Lit in 1881 after two perilous years of construction, it guided ships toward the Columbia River mouth until 1957, when it was abandoned and replaced by a whistle buoy. For a time thereafter, it was a privately owned columbarium — a storage place for ashes of the deceased.

Private lighthouses

In addition to Oregon’s historic lighthouses, the state has two private lighthouses — the Cleft of the Rock near Yachats and the Pelican Bay Light at Brookings Harbor. Both may be viewed only from a distance.

Cleft of the Rock was built in 1976 by Jim Gibbs, a former Tillamook Rock lighthouse keeper and a widely published maritime historian. Gibbs incorporated a replica of Vancouver Island’s 1898 Fiddle Reef lighthouse into his home, which stands 110 feet above the Pacific, 3 miles south of Yachats. It may be seen just west of Highway 101.

The newest lighthouse in the United States is the Pelican Bay light, built in 1990 by Bill Cady, and moved in 1997 to the corner of a 100-foot cliff overlooking the harbor. The octagonal tower, attached to a Cape Cod-style home 141 feet above the ocean, has a Fresnel lens that has run from dusk until dawn every night since July 1999.

Across the Columbia

Although they are not in Oregon, two more lights at Washington’s Cape Disappointment State Park, guarding the north side of the mouth of the Columbia River, have had a major impact on shipping traffic across the river’s notorious bar.

The Cape Disappointment and North Head lights stand about 3 miles apart. Cape Disappointment turned on its light in 1856; it is now the oldest lighthouse still in use on the West Coast. But because it faced south across the river, its light couldn’t be seen by vessels approaching from sea. Today, its 53-foot tower rises to 220 feet above the sea, just beyond the modern Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, which has exhibits describing the final 1805-06 portion of the Corps of Discovery’s cross-country journey.

About 3 miles northwest, the 65-foot North Head light was completed in 1898 to warn ships on the Pacific approach. Rising to 190 feet above sea level, it has a modern rotating beacon that actually is inferior in glow (17 miles) to its original Fresnel lens, which shone for 20 miles to sea. Three keepers’ residences are available as vacation rentals.

Cape Disappointment State Park, sweeping across 1,882 acres, embraces 250 campsites, 2 miles of ocean beach and 6 miles of hiking trails.

— Reporter: janderson@bendbulletin.com