Self-guided Tour Start

Arch Rock

Tim Hauf, timhaufphotography.com

Quick Facts

Amenities

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Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits

There are two routes for this tour. Both routes begin at the visitor center. You may take the lower trail located in front of the buildings, which leads to Cathedral Cove. Or you may take the upper trail located behind the buildings, which leads to Pinniped Point. Both routes cover the same information. For variety, we recommend you take the opposite route back.

A booklet for this tour is also available from the brochure holder adjacent to the trail head introductory panel. You may purchase the booklet for $1 and take it home with you or you may just borrow it and return it when you are done.

Click on the sections to the right for the tour introduction and information about the lighthouse complex.

Visit other historic site locations in the app to learn even more about the historic buildings in the lighthouse complex.
 

Tour Introduction: East Anacapa Island...A World of Isolation

A peaceful silence surrounds the tile-roofed buildings below the lighthouse on Anacapa. It is a silence that is accented by an occasional call of a foghorn, a cry from a gull flying overhead, or the bellow of a protective male sea lion below. It is a reminder that Anacapa is an island, a world apart, isolated from the mainland by eleven miles of ocean.

Isolation is an important facet of life on all the Channel Islands. It has fostered the evolution of plants and animals found nowhere else in the world. Plants and animals that are unique to a certain location are called endemic species. Isolation, essential for a species to become endemic, allows these creatures to become well adapted to their unique environment.

Isolation has also played a major role in shaping human activities on Anacapa. The island's separation from the mainland, as well as its steep cliffs, have limited and directed human use and occupation of Anacapa for thousands of years.
 

Lighthouse Complex

At 11:00 pm on December 2, 1853, a frightening jolt woke the passengers aboard the side-wheel steamer Winfield Scott. Rushing on deck, they discovered that the ship had run aground in dense fog. Water poured into the ship's hold through two gaping holes in its wooden hull. Boarding the lifeboats, the passengers rowed to safety on Middle Anacapa Island, but the Winfield Scott was lost. Its remains lie submerged off the island's north shore.

Despite the wrecking of the Winfield Scott and other ships off Anacapa's coast, a light was not placed on the island until 1912. Because of Anacapa's isolation, and the difficulties of building and supplying such a remote station, the first light was an unmanned, acetylene beacon placed atop a fifty-foot-tall metal tower.

Responding to requests for better navigation aids along the Santa Barbara Channel, the Bureau of Lighthouses replaced the beacon with a lighthouse containing a 3rd-order Fresnel lens in 1932. The lens is now on display in the Anacapa Island Visitor Center.

Buildings to support the lighthouse were constructed in the Spanish Revival style, characterized by tile roofs, stucco walls, and arched openings. The light station resembled a small town, with four residences flanking a main street that led to the powerhouse, oil house, general services building, fog signal building, lighthouse, water tank building, and other support structures. A series of ninety steps with two landings and a crane were built to transport people and gear from the landing cove to the top of the steep cliff.

Anacapa's isolation has always presented special challenges to island residents. Food, water, and other supplies must be shipped from the mainland and hoisted up the steep slopes at the Landing Cove. Power is supplied by solar energy supplemented by generators; communications are by radio and cell phone.
 

Lighthouse Complex Timeline

- On December 2, 1853, the side-wheel steamer Winfield Scott collided with Middle Anacapa Island. The wreck's notoriety led President Franklin Pierce to sign an executive order the following year, reserving Anacapa for lighthouse purposes.

- The island's rugged terrain made the cost too high for immediate construction. Charles Hillinger, in the The California Islands, wrote that when members of the U. S. Coast Survey team visited Anacapa in 1854 they reported that it was an ideal but impossible site for a light station. Quoting a report, Hillinger wrote, "It is inconceivable for a lighthouse to be constructed on this mass of volcanic rock-perpendicular on every face, with an ascent inaccessible by any natural means . . . ."

- In 1874, Congress funded a less expensive mainland station at Port Hueneme.

- At the turn of the century, increased shipping traffic heightens the need for an Anacapa light. In 1911, Congress funded an automatic acetylene beacon mounted on a 50 foot metal tower at the eastern edge of Anacapa. In clear weather, the light could be seen from 20 miles in the distance. A whistling buoy was also anchored 5/8 of a mile offshore.

- An estimated nine-tenths of all vessels trading up and down the Pacific Coast passed through the Santa Barbara Channel by 1920. Members of the American Association of Masters, Mates and Pilots demanded a fog signal as well as a light. A permanent lighthouse, however, required authorization by Congress. When the tank steamer Liebre grounded on the east end of Anacapa Island on February 28, 1921, directly under the light tower, local inspectors blamed the inadequate station and the capsized whistling buoy.

- In 1928, the Bureau of Lighthouses allocated funds for an Anacapa lighthouse, the last major light station on the west coast. The Bureau of Lighthouses Annual Report for 1929 gave an estimated total for the entire project of $186,000.00. It included station residences, service buildings, hoisting derricks, a fog signal, radiobeacon, and miscellaneous improvements for the water supply, sanitation, and grounds improvement.

- Construction was carried out in two phases--landing facilities and roads, followed by the tower and support buildings. The engineering fete was completed in 1933 at a cost of $110,490. The new station provided beacon and foghorn service plus weather and radio monitoring.

- The new lighthouse's keeper, Frederick Cobb, lit the first light on March 25, 1932. Located on the highest point of East Anacapa Island, the Anacapa Island Lighthouse became an indispensable resource to shipping and passenger boats. At the top of the 39-foot concrete cylindrical tower flashed a third-order Fresnel lens, one of the most advanced lighthouse beacons in the world.

- From 1931 through the 1960s, the light station housed a crew of between 15 and 25 people who maintained the lens, fog signal and tower, hourly weather and radar monitoring and reports, and a radio tower.

- In 1938, Anacapa and Santa Barbara Islands were established as Channel Islands National Monument.

- In 1939, the U.S.Coast Guard replaced the Lighthouse Service.

- The Anacapa light is blacked out during World War II, when the facilities were used as a coastal lookout station by the U.S. Navy.

- In 1961 the U.S. Coast Guard modernized the light station by replacing the fog signal system and installing electrical appliances. The following year, however, a new plan was outlined to automate the Anacapa Island Light Station and to establish a rescue facility at Point Hueneme Light Station.

- U.S. Coast Guard tender crews were phased out in the early 1960's. By 1967, Anacapa's light is fully automated and was able to be operated from the mainland.

- In 1966, orders were approved to demolish three of the dwellings, the engine equipment building, shops, water tank house in one phase. Phase two removal included: the hoist house on the lower landing, the lower derrick and hoist equipment, burning the general services building, converting the power building to emergency quarters for servicing personnel, and burning the remaining quarters building. In May 1967, three of the houses were demolished.

- In 1970, the U.S. Coast Guard and National Park Service signed a cooperative agreement. The lighthouse and fog horn continued under U.S. Coast Guard jurisdiction. The other facilities were to be maintained by the National Park Service.

- With the addition of Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa and San Miguel Islands, Channel Islands National Park was established in 1980.

- The light and fog horn were converted to solar power in 1989. An acrylic lens (airport beacon) replaced the original Fresnel lens, which was carefully relocated to the Anacapa Visitor Center. These modern lenses are small versions of Augustin Fresnel's invention, using the same technology employed by the nineteenth-century physicist.

- The Anacapa Island Light Station was entered on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. Twelve buildings and structures listed as contributing resources in the nomination form were: lighthouse tower; fog signal building; assistant keeper's residence; general services building; tank house; derrick building; oil house; power house; lower landing; upper derrick landing; landing stairway; and concrete watershed (rainshed).

- In 1993, a conservation project restored the Fresnel lens to its original lustre. Guided by the NPS Archaeological Preservation Office, the lens was disassembled, polished to remove corrosion, lacquered, waxed and reassembled by park personnel.

- In 1995, the lighthouse was restored by the U.S. Coast Guard.

- Today, while the park manages the island, the U.S. Coast Guard continues to operate the lighthouse and fog signal building as an active aid to. For safety reasons, visitors to Anacapa Island are not permitted to tour the lighthouse.
 

More Information: Winfield Scott

Anacapa Island, while surrounded by relatively calm waters when compared to those west of it, experiences dangerous fogs and Santa Ana winds. A number of vessels wrecked on or near the island although only one seemed to have been related to pilot error. The wreck of the Winfield Scott in 1853 was the most important of the Channel Islands shipwrecks.

Westervelt and MacKay of New York built the Winfield Scott in 1850 for a route between New York and New Orleans. Named for the commanding general of the U. S. Army, Mexican War hero and presidential nominee, the 225-foot steam paddlewheeler began travel between the east and west coasts when she joined the New York and San Francisco Steamship Line in 1852. She set a record for that route (via Cape Horn) of less than 49 days. She then took passengers between Panama and San Francisco, usually in overcrowded conditions. In July of 1853 the Winfield Scott was sold to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company.

Loaded with over 300 passengers and crew and a reported $1 million in gold bullion (some accounts but the figure at $2 million), the Winfield Scott departed San Francisco on December 1, 1853. The next evening Captain Simon F. Blunt chose to pass through the Santa Barbara Channel to save time, but in a dense fog crashed into Middle Anacapa at full speed at 11:00 in the evening. Apparently Blunt had turned southeast thinking he had cleared Santa Cruz or Anacapa Islands. Purser Watkins gave this account, which was published by the Alta California:

"The ship's bow struck first, staving two holes in the bow; then, in backing off, her stern struck and knocked away her rudder. Most of the passengers had gone to bed but they came on deck in alarm. They could only look out into a thick fog and see nothing of the land. After losing the rudder, the ship drifted off the island a few hundred yards and then was swept back to strike the shore again with her bow. She had already taken on much water and now sank up to her guards.

The Captain immediately sent out a boat to see where he could land the passengers. The purser reported that a little island separate from the main one was nearest and that the passengers could be placed on it for the night. The next morning the passengers, some mail, and the treasure were taken onto the main island. Captain Blunt stayed cool, provided bedding and provisions for the passengers, and moved among them unceasingly in his efforts to make them comfortable."

After being brought from the small pinnacle some 200 yards offshore to the island in the ship's boats, the large group camped on the island for up to a week. The California saw smoke from the passengers' fires and rescued the women. It returned on December 9 and, in heavy swells, removed the rest of the passengers, leaving the ship's company on the island who attempted to save mail, baggage, furniture and some machinery from the wreck. Other boats appeared for salvage opportunities, including that of Captain Horatio Gates Trussell, who used wood and two brass thresholds from the wreck in the construction of his Santa Barbara home.

On the 10th the steamer Southerner hove into sight and landed provisions for the officers and crew. Up to that time, the Winfield Scott had not been broken up by the action of the waves. When the Republic arrived the next day, however, the midship was sunk and Captain Blunt gave up all hope of saving her or getting her off the ledge. The crew went out to the ship and saved what they could before boarding the Republic for San Francisco. Some time later, the side-wheeler toppled off the ledge and sank. The valuable cargo was apparently saved although the lure of gold still attracts divers, who are prohibited by federal law from disturbing the wreck site.

In 1894 and during World War II major salvage took place on the Winfield Scott. One firm blasted the wreck in order to remove hundreds of large copper bolts and much of the iron machinery. The wreck became popular to sport divers who are now prohibited by antiquity laws from removing any artifacts. The wreck of the Winfield Scott is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The wreck scatter is surveyed each year by the National Park Service. The scatter is considered to be small for such a large vessel, with the bow and stern missing. The most prominent piece of wreckage is purported to be the port paddle wheel, which stands above the bottom.