Piedras Blancas Lighthouse Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard

A whaling station was established near San Simeon in 1864 to surprise the huge creatures as they hugged the nearby shoreline during their annual migration. By the early 1870s, San Simeon Bay had become a substantial port, as lumber, farm produce, and Cinnabar, an ore mined for its mercury, were exported from California's Central Coast. The Lighthouse Board was granted $70,000 for the construction of a tower to safely guide commerce into the bay, and to help light the otherwise dark coast that extended from Point Conception to Point Piños. The site selected for the tower was Piedras Blancas, a point just north of the bay. As Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailed along this coast in 1542, he gave the point its name on account of the large white rocks located just offshore.

In 1874, material for the tower was off-loaded near the point, and a crew of around thirty began work on the ornate tower. The first-order Fresnel lens in the 115-foot Piedras Blancas Lighthouse was first illuminated on February 15, 1875. As funds were depleted before completion of the station's dwelling, the keepers were forced to live in construction worker's shanties, until $15,000 was secured for the construction of a dwelling that was completed later that year. The large, two-story, Victorian triplex stood just east of the tower and housed three keepers and their families. In 1906, a fog signal building was added to the station and a one-keeper dwelling was built east of the triplex to accommodate the additional keeper now required to run the station. A concrete fuel-oil house was built near the fog signal building in 1908 to store the volatile kerosene, and the following year, a barn/garage was built a couple hundred feet north of the tower.

Captain Lorin Vincent Thorndyke became keeper of the lighthouse shortly after it was finished. Thorndyke was a native of Maine, and before accepting the assignment at Piedras Blancas, had circumnavigated the globe five times. He married Elizabeth Jarmon soon after arriving at the station, and two sons, Lorin, Jr. and Emory, were born to them at the lighthouse.

Lorin, Jr. recalls that during two or three summers in the 1880’s a schooner from San Francisco anchored off the white rocks near the station to harvest the deep covering of guano that had accumulated over the years. Men were transferred to the rocks in small boats where they would shovel the droppings into sacks, which were then transferred to the schooner. As one can easily imagine, Lorin remembers that a most offensive odor drifted over the station when the guano was disturbed.

Piedras Blancas Light Station Photograph courtesy Bureau of Land Management

After thirty years of service at the station, Captain Thorndyke decided that at age 75 it was time for him to retire. Still in good health, the captain used the noise created by the newly installed fog signal as his official excuse for leaving the station. Lorin, Jr. admitted later that the noise really wasn’t a nuisance for his father.

In the hills southeast of the lighthouse, William Randolph Hearst started construction of his expansive castle in 1919. The Piedras Blancas Lighthouse was incorporated into a crest found above the entrance to the living room in Casa del Monte, one of three guest "cottages" located near the castle. Work on the castle continued until Hearst left San Simeon in 1947. The Piedras Blancas Lighthouse also has another connection to Hearst Castle. Norman Francis, son of the head keeper at the lighthouse from 1934 to 1948, was one of several high school aged youth in the area who were employed at the castle for short periods to help with various chores.

In 1949, a fierce storm damaged the lantern room, and the lens, lantern room, ornate railing, and the beautiful sculpted upper portion of the tower were all removed. A rotating aerobeacon was placed atop the shortened, capped tower, and the lighthouse returned to service. Following its removal, the local Lion's Club rescued the lens, reassembled it, and placed it on a concrete pad at their Pinedorado grounds. The light stood on the pad uncovered for roughly forty years, and remarkably suffered minimum damage from the elements or vandals. In 1990, Norman Francis, who had returned to Cambria after a career with the CIA, launched an effort to restore and protect the lens. The lens was taken by the Coast Guard to their station in Monterey, where it was cleaned and restored. The Friends of Piedras Blancas Light helped construct a modern lantern room, which now houses the lens at the Pinedorado grounds on Main Street in Cambria.

In 1960, the original Victorian triplex was razed, and four ranch style houses were built for Coast Guard personnel. The dwelling, which was built in 1906 and which housed the head keeper, was sold for $1, relocated to Cambria at a cost of around $1,400, and remodeled for $60,000 to serve as a private residence.

The Coast Guard staffed the lighthouse until 1975, when the tower was automated and the station unmanned. Since that time, the housing and station have been used to study sea otters and sensitive plant and animal life. The lighthouse was transferred from the Coast Guard to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in October of 2001. The Bakersfield office of the BLM has indicated that they are developing plans to completely restore the upper portions of the tower, including replication of the lantern room.

Just south of the lighthouse is a relatively new elephant seal colony. It is believed that overcrowding at other colonies prompted a group of seals to found the new colony around 1990. From an original population of 19, the colony attracted approximately 10,000 seals in 2000.

Thanks to several varieties of seals along with gulls, cormorants and other winged creatures, the rocks offshore from the lighthouse seem certain to retain the name of Piedras Blancas.

References

1. The Keeper's Log, Spring 2001.
2. "Where the Highway Ends," Geneva Hamilton, 1974.
3. Umbrella Guide to California Lighthouses, Sharlene and Ted Nelson, 1993.

To see the lens: From the lighthouse, follow Highway 1 south to Cambria and turn left at the Moonstone Beach Drive/Main Street traffic light. Turn right to stay on Main Street, and the lens will be on your right after a few blocks. The lens is lit and actually rotates on Fridays between 2:00 and 4:00 p.m. and on Saturday evenings from 7:37 p.m. to 8:37 p.m.