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New Dungeness Spit, a six-mile-long, flat sandbar barely visible from a distance, is one of the longest natural spits in the world. Captain George Vancouver named it "New Dungeness" in 1792 because it reminded him of Dungeness Point on England's southeast coast, where a light has guided mariners since around 1600. Perhaps Vancouver imagined a light someday gracing New Dungeness as well.

Just over a half-century later, in 1849, the spot was designated as a site for a lighthouse and on December 14, 1857, the light from New Dungeness Lighthouse, the second lighthouse established in Washington Territory, was exhibited for the first time using a fixed, third-order Fresnel lens.

The lighthouse was based on a design by Ammi B. Young and was built under the direction of Isaac Smith, who in parallel also supervised the work at Cape Flattery. To encourage the completion of the lighthouses in a timely manner, Smith initiated a friendly rivalry between his two crews. The workmen at New Dungeness completed their work just two weeks before the men at Cape Flattery.

The original New Dungeness lighthouse was a 1 ½ story Cape Cod style duplex with a tower rising from its pitched roof. The brick tower, which rose to a height of ninety-two feet, was equipped with a wooden stairway with five landings and had an unusual color pattern. The lower half of the tower was painted white, the top half dark lead, and the lantern room a bright red. The lighthouse was located one-sixth of a mile from the outer end of the spit, and an open-frame fog bell tower was erected on the extreme outer end of the spit. A 1,200-pound was sounded every ten seconds during thick or foggy weather.

Nicknamed Shipwreck Spit for a reason, New Dungeness Spit also has a long history as an Indian battleground, and the skirmishes didn't stop after the lighthouse commenced operation. Perhaps as a sign of gratitude for the light that also served as a guide to them, the Indians never molested the lightkeepers.

In September 1868, eighteen Tsimshiam Indians were camping near the lighthouse on their return trip to British Columbia after earning wages picking hops in the Puyallup Valley, when, in the dead of night, Clallam Indians attacked the party and slaughtered everyone. Or so they thought. After being stabbed over twenty times, a pregnant woman played dead while they robbed her of her bracelets and rings, and then crawled to the lighthouse for help.

New Dungeness Lighthouse with 1907 fog signal building Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard

Lightkeeper William Blake and his wife Mary Ann took the woman in and treated her wounds. The Clallam Indians returned, and after counting the bodies and coming up one short, followed the bloody trail to the lighthouse. There was a short stand off when Keeper Blake refused the Clallams' demand to relinquish the woman, but fearing the military might be called in, the Clallams eventually left.

In 1872, the Lighthouse Board requested $8,000 for a steam fog whistle to replace the bell, which was considered "almost if not quite useless." Funds were appropriated on March 3, 1873, and a twelve-inch whistle was soon in operation on the spit, 430 feet northeast of the lighthouse. The station's four cisterns were enlarged to supply water for the steam whistle, and a frame addition was constructed on the old stone dwelling. The fog bell remained at the station until it was transferred to the just-built Point No Point Lighthouse in 1880.

A wooden tramway was constructed in 1875 to connect the station's boathouse with the dwelling and fog signal building. A handcar, that ran along the tramway, facilitated the transport of the roughly thirty tons of coal that were consumed by the fog signal each year.

In 1895, the Lighthouse Board note the following in its annual report:

The dwellings erected at this station are arranged for the accommodation of two families and one single man; but as there are four keepers employed, and sometimes three of them with families, there is insufficient accommodation and a new dwelling is urgently needed. The estimated cost of a suitable building, cistern, outhouse, etc., for this station is $4,000.

A new fog signal building was added to the station in 1907 to house two twenty-five-horsepower oil engines and air compressors that operated duplicate, six-inch sirens.

Over time, the tower developed structural cracks and in 1927, it was shortened by thirty feet. With the new tower dimensions, the original lantern room was too large for the tower, so it was replaced by the lantern room from the decommissioned Admiralty Head Lighthouse. The remodeled tower was painted white from top to bottom, the same as it appears today, and a fourth-order lens was used in its lantern room.

The keepers on the spit were dependent on rainwater stored in the station's cisterns until an artesian well was drilled in 1930. A six-inch casing was driven to a depth of 400 feet, and drilling continued to a depth of 665 feet, where a clay bed was penetrated and a water-bearing strata encountered. The well was capable of delivering eighty gallons of water each minute.

In 1933, a 12,500-foot-long submarine cable was laid across New Dungeness Bay to provide the station with commercial power.

A modern optic was installed atop the tower in 1976, replacing the Fresnel lens. Coast Guard keeper William A. Byrd wrote on that occasion: "The prism lens was turned off ... and the sparkling glass and rotating prism lens was replaced with a cold apparatus." The Fresnel lens can now be seen at the Coast Guard Museum in Seattle.

New Dungeness was the last lighthouse on the West Coast manned by the Coast Guard, not losing its last keeper until 1994. The Coast Guard was about to board up the lighthouse when volunteers with the Coast Guard Auxiliary and members of the New Dungeness Chapter of the U.S. Lighthouse Society set in motion a plan that has literally saved the lighthouse.

The chapter currently leases the station from the Coast Guard and manages a program where volunteers stay at the lighthouse for a week, maintaining the structure and greeting visitors. The program has proven so popular that the reservation waiting list is often two years long.

On the evening of July 11, 1999, a volunteer keeper was watching the sunset from the lantern room when he noticed what he called a ground forest fire moving toward the station. The Coast Guard, fire department, sheriff's department and Lighthouse Society were all quickly alerted. The volunteer turned the lawn sprinklers on and set them near the helicopter pad, the spot the fire would reach first. Those actions saved the lightstation, as the sprinklers caused the fire to fork and go around the station. The fire reconnected forty feet east of the main keeper's house. Every building incurred smoke damage, but none were destroyed.

This wasn't the first time that fire had threatened the lighthouse. In 1923, Keeper Edward A. Brooks, and Anders G. Berner, his assistant, helped fight a fire which destroyed the power house at the nearby naval radio compass station that had been established on the spit in 1921 to help mariners determine their location.

New Dungeness Lighthouse is now located in the Dungeness Wildlife Refuge. The refuge is haven to more than 250 species of birds, forty-one species of land mammals, and eight species of marine mammals. No matter which route you take to the lighthouse, walking or kayaking, there is sure to be plenty of wildlife - and a friendly volunteer keeper waiting to greet you.

Head Keepers: Franklin Tucker (1857 – 1858), Thomas Boyling (1858 – 1860), William Henry Blake (1860 – 1868), Jacob J. Rogers (1868 – 1871), Charles H. Blake (1871 – 1873), Franklin Tucker (1873 – 1882), Osmore H. Morgan (1882 – 1896), Oscar V. Brown (1896 – 1898), Joseph Dunson (1898 – 1900), Edward Durgan (1900 – 1902), Edward A. Brooks (1902 – 1925), Carl Lien (at least 1930 – at least 1935), Ted Menzony (at least 1940).

Photo Gallery: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

References

1. Umbrella Guide to Washington Lighthouses, Sharlene and Ted Nelson, 1998.
2. Lighthouses of the Pacific Coast, Randy Leffingwell and Pamela Welty, 2000.
3. Lighthouses of the Pacific, Jim Gibbs, 1986.