SEQUIM – Living in the lighthouse on Dungeness spit while he was in the U.S. Coast Guard was paradise, Bill Byrd said at a celebration of the structure’s 150th anniversary Sunday.
Byrd was the last officer in charge stationed at the New Dungeness Lighthouse for the Coast Guard.
One of only two former Coast Guard lighthouse keepers attending Sunday’s celebration, Byrd said that by the time he was stationed there, in the mid 1970s, the Coast Guard participation had begun to wane.
“When I was there, there were three people, and then toward the end just two and later on it was just the keeper out there,” he said.
Although he has seldom visited his former home, he stopped by the party to relive the memories of not only working on the spit, but fishing, crabbing and enjoying “paradise” at that post.
The lighthouse was built in 1857, with much of the construction attributed to Konrad Schnieder, whose great-great-great-great grandson, Philip Dobson, attended the Sunday fanfare.
Members of the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe and the New Dungeness Lighthouse Society celebrated the sesquicentennial anniversary in Sequim with music, stories, food and learning.
At one point during the daylong celebration, 60 to 70 visitors were on hand.
The celebration featured the lighthouse interpretive center – something one otherwise can’t see unless you paddle or hike out to the spit.
Traveling between Sequim and the lighthouse still isn’t easy.
Most people either walk the five miles across the sand or paddle a canoe or kayak from the Dungeness area.
Because it isn’t an easy task to get to the lighthouse, the lighthouse society’s bringing the interpretive center to the community was a treat.
The interpretive center was created by Bette Leffle and is set up at one of the duplexes near the real lighthouse on a regular basis.
The pictures, descriptions and timelines lead visitors through the history of the structure as well as its importance to the area.
“When I got on the board several years ago, they asked me to do it because I had been a former teacher,” she said.
The displays include showing how the spit was formed, a historical timeline, explorers, the Jamestown S’Klallam and other events and players.
According to Allyson Brooks, a state historical preservation officer, the lighthouse is the second oldest in the state.
Lighthouses are one of the remaining relics of the beginning economy in the United States, Brooks said.
“Many people think that the economy of the U.S. started with the trains, but it started with shipping,” she said.
“And lighthouses were there to guide the ships on their way through the rugged coastlines.
“I think it is amazing that these people would spend days, months, years out there guiding all of these complete strangers that they would never even meet.”
