Keepers of the Light: The Story of the Point Conception Lighthouse

In 1850, as California became a state, the U.S. Congress approved the building of 8 lighthouses along the Pacific Coast. Point Conception, where the California coast turns from a north/south to an east/west orientation was the most shipwreck-prone place on the coast, called the Cape Horn of the Pacific and the Graveyard of Ships. Mariners racing to San Francisco and the Gold Fields of the Sierra Nevada demanded a lighthouse on the Point. Keepers of the Light tells the story of the Point Conception lighthouse from its building in the early 1850s until the decommissioning of its gigantic first order Fresnel Lens by the U.S. Coast Guard in 1973. With historical records gathered from the National Archives and interviews with keepers of the light at Point Conception and their children and grandchildren, Keepers of the Light focuses a steady beam of history on the people who made this remote site a bustling village and beacon of safety for mariners approching the coast.