Trinidad Head Lighthouse Photograph courtesy National Archives

In 1866, forty-two acres were purchased for a light station on the southern portion of the headland, but work on the project did not begin until the spring of 1871. First, a road was carved into the eastern side of the head, and then work began on the Trinidad Head Lighthouse, which would stand at the top of a 175-foot cliff. Given the loftiness of its perch, a squat brick tower was deemed adequate. The tower and associated keeper's dwelling, located roughly fifty yards from the tower, were finished over the course of the summer and fall, and on December 1, 1871, Keeper Jeremiah Kiler activated the revolving fourth-order Fresnel lens for the first time.

Keeper Kiler faithfully stood watch over the light for a lengthy tenure of seventeen years, but amazingly his successor, Fred L. Harrington would top this by remaining at the station for twenty-eight years before retiring in 1916 and being replaced by Edward Wilborg. Harrington oversaw the installation in 1898 of a fog bell atop a rock outcropping, roughly fifty feet below the level of the light. Suspended from a concrete gallows, the 4,000-pound bell was struck by at prescribed intervals by a heavy hammer. A clockwork mechanism was housed in a frame bell house just east of the bell, and weights descended down the face of the cliff to power the apparatus. The keeper had to wind the machinery every two hours, and the single-family dwelling was expanded into a double dwelling to house the additional keeper assigned to share the increased workload at the station.

The fog bell worked fine for a couple of years, until the weight cable snapped sending the weights plummeting down the face of the cliff. To prevent the loss of additional weights, a wooden weight tower was constructed on a concrete foundation next to the gallows and bell house. As the tower was much shorter than the height of the cliff, the keepers most likely got a lot more exercise running up and down the forty-eight steps and sloping boardwalk that led from the dwelling to the fog bell.

Trinidad Head Light Station Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard

The most notorious event connected to the lighthouse was a huge storm wave that struck the headland in 1914. Keeper Harrington recorded the following account of the incident in the station log:

The storm commenced on December 28, 1914, blowing a gale that night. The gale continued for a whole week and was accompanied by a very heavy sea from the southwest. On the 30th and 31st, the sea increased and at 3 p.m. on the 31st seemed to have reached its height, when it washed a number of times over (93-foot-high) Pilot Rock, a half mile south of the head. At 4:40 p.m., I was in the tower and had just set the lens in operation and turned to wipe the lantern room windows when I observed a sea of unusual height, then about 200 yards distant, approaching. I watched it as it came in. When it struck the bluff, the jar was very heavy, and the sea shot up to the face of the bluff and over it, until the solid sea seemed to me to be on a level with where I stood in the lantern. Then it commenced to recede and the spray went 25 feet or more higher. The sea itself fell over onto the top of the bluff and struck the tower on about a level with the balcony, making a terrible jar. The whole point between the tower and the bluff was buried in water. The lens immediately stopped revolving and the tower was shivering from the impact for several seconds.

Whether the lens was thrown off level by the jar on the bluff, or the sea striking the tower, I could not say. Either one would have been enough. However, I had it leveled and running in half an hour. About an hour later another sea threw spray up on the level of the bluff, and the constant jars of the heavy sea was much over normal during the night and the whole of the next day. On the 3rd, the sea moderated to some extent, but a strong southeast wind and high sea continued until the 5th. During the 26 years that I have been stationed here, there has at no time been a sea of any such size as that of the 31st experienced here: but once during that time have I know the spray to come onto the bluff in front of the tower, and but twice have I seen sea or spray go over Pilot Rock.

Trinidad Head Lighthouse

Trinidad Bay was home to a whaling station in the early 1920s, and the keepers often served as a lookout for the faint white puffs, indicating the presence of gray whales migrating along the coast. As many as twenty-nine whales a week were hauled ashore in the bay for processing, which produced an offensive odor. Most Trinidad residents were relieved when the whaling operations ended in 1929.

Electricity came to the station in 1942. As a result, in 1947 the fog bell was replaced by compressed air horns, and the lens was removed in favor of a modern beacon. Two years later, a replica of the tower called the Trinidad Memorial Lighthouse was built in town on a bluff overlooking the bay, and the original lens was placed in the lantern room. The original fog bell, suspended from a wooden structure, is on display next to the memorial lighthouse.

The original keepers' dwelling was razed in the late 1960s, and the Coast Guard built a triplex to house its personnel. The station was automated in 1974, but Coast Guard personnel continued to live in the housing until sometime after 2000. The Trinidad Head Lighthouse is still active, with a drum-type Fresnel lens in the tower and a backup modern beacon mounted outside the lantern room. A pair of fog signals are stacked next to the fog bell house, which is the only remaining bell house in California.

Head Keepers: Jeremiah Kiler (1871 – 1888), Frederick Leonard Harrington (1888 – 1916), Edward Wilborg (1916 – at least 1930), Malcolm Cady (at least 1940).

References

1. Lighthouses and Lifeboats on the Redwood Coast, Ralph Shanks, 1978.
2. Umbrella Guide to California Lighthouses, Sharlene and Ted Nelson, 1993.