PORT TOWNSEND — Point Wilson Lighthouse is lit once again with its original 1879 Fresnel lens. Out of commission for decades, the historic lens was relit on Oct. 29.
“Relighting this historic optic is more than a technical achievement,” said Jeff Gales, executive director of the U.S. Lighthouse Society. “It’s a revival of the spirit that has watched over these waters for over a century.”
A lens is the heart of a lighthouse, Gales said.
The United States Lighthouse Society (USLS) will host an official celebration and fundraiser in May.
Tours for the lighthouse will reopen next spring, when visitors will be able to climb the tower and glimpse the lamp, said Mel Carter, lighthouse keeper and property manager. However, access to the lamp room has been restricted since relighting the classic lens.
“There’s a whole big story about what’s happened to the lenses since the 1950s,” Gales said. “A lot of the lenses were lost and destroyed over time. Some of them were moved to museums. Some of them, by the sheer grace of God, were left in the lighthouses, like this one.”
Gales said they are lucky to have the light still in the lantern room, where the U.S. Coast Guard left it.
The majority of lighthouses, including the one at Point Wilson, have long been modernized with LEDs, Gales said.
Carter said the Fresnel lens was decommissioned by the Coast Guard in 1976.
The LED bulb is currently on the ground in the lantern room, where it will be kept until USLS and the Coast Guard deem it to be safe to take it down, Gales said.
“Nothing is going to happen,” Gales said. “We’ve been running it (the motor) for three or four months with no problems.”
USLS hopes to display the LED lens in the museum at the base of the lighthouse.
Gales said that in addition to its beauty and historical interest, the Fresnel lens provides better light.
“It’s a much better light, it’s a much brighter light. You can see the light now during the daytime,” Gales said.
“Our modern light was rotating 24/7, but you couldn’t see it during the daytime. There’s something magical about it, to be quite frank with you.”
The project of relighting the lens took almost three years of coordinating with the Coast Guard on permissions as well as bringing the spinning lens up to working order.
“The only reason we were able to do it is we have working with us a certified lampist with the Coast Guard,” Gales said. “That’s a real thing, people who have a knowledge of historical artifacts, lenses like that. There’s only a few of them in the United States, four or five of them, certified by the Coast Guard to work on these lenses.”
The project manager of the Fresnel lens restoration is Chad Kaiser, Gales said, the general manager of the New Dungeness Lighthouse.
Kaiser moved to Washington along with USLS when it transitioned its headquarters from San Francisco to Hansville in Kitsap County. The organization is headquartered at the Point No Point Lighthouse.
USLS is the only national group that works to preserve, manage and keep up lighthouses, Gales said. Its focus is to provide access and education about lighthouses, he said.
USLS is self-funded, Gales said. In the case of Point Wilson, much of the revenue comes from several of the property structures being turned into vacation rentals, including the original lighthouse and keeper’s quarters.
Each lighthouse has its own unique light pattern, Gales said. Point Wilson’s is steady light followed by flashes of red every 20 seconds, Carter said.
USLS had to publish a notice to mariners when it changed back over to the historical lighting, Gales said, a requirement for making even slight changes to a light.
The lighthouse is now one of only two in Washington state with a working Fresnel lens, Gales said. The other is in Mukilteo, which has a fixed lens, meaning it doesn’t rotate and has no motor, Gales added.
Gales said he sees Point Wilson Lighthouse as able to draw further attention to cause of lighthouse preservation more broadly. Being located in such a heavily visited park as Fort Worden and being accessible by car, the lighthouse could be one of the most visited and photographed lighthouses in the country, he said.
Gales said that, before COVID, the Fort Worden State Park measured its annual visitation to be about 1.3 million visitors per year.
It is for that same reason that Gales is excited about USLS’ work in opening up the lighthouse on Alcatraz, which could see over a million visitors a year.
Carter said she has a love for Fort Worden and the lighthouse. She used to park her car by the lighthouse and think about how it might be to live there.
“The oldest recorded lighthouse is the lighthouse of Alexandria,” Carter said. “They have a lot of history, a lot of mystery, a lot of stories, and I think in a sense we are all human lighthouses. We all have stories to tell. We’re all bringing out light into something or into someone else’s world. Maybe I find deeper meaning in all things, but that’s how I see it.”
For more information about the lighthouse as well information on tours, vacation rentals and events, visit https://www.pointwilsonlighthouse.org.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com.
