How Can You Lose A Lighthouse?
By Sue Clark on Jun 7, 2008 in News, Opinion 
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Or Rather the Lantern Room
The latest issue of Lighthouse Digest contained a story about the discovery of a supposedly destroyed lighthouse in Cape Cod, MA, that was found doing duty as the Point Montara Lightstation south of San Francisco, CA. The story was published in the Cape Cod Times and caught the eye of the national and online news, including Yahoo, MSN, Fox, the Washington Post and the Associated Press. Unfortunately, the original story is not available in the Lighthouse Digest online edition, but you can read the full story here by Colleen MacNeney.
Most non-lighthouse people could not fathom how a lighthouse could be lost. A lot of comments were asking, “How can you lose a lighthouse?” Simple, if you’re the Coast Guard.
A History of Losing Records
It’s not the lighthouse itself that was lost, it was the records of it that were lost. And the Coast Guard is notorious for its poor record keeping. When they took over the running of our nation’s lighthouses in 1939, I would imagine a lot of the files that they received from the US Lighthouse Service were pretty much tossed out, without any thought whatsoever to their potential historic value. Certainly the record of the removal and transfer of a lantern room wouldn’t have been something they’d want to keep. And with the realignment of the Coast Guard to focus on Homeland Security after 9-11, even more records were misplaced. Their own database of lighthouses says the tower was razed in 1939. Yet the photo that led to this search says
It is to Colleen MacNeney’s credit that she was able to find the letter indicating the move of the lantern in the National Archives. It was through a photograph of a lighthouse tower in Yerba Buena, CA., dated 1928 with the inscription: “This tower formerly used at Mayo Beach, 2d District” that led her (and her parents) on the quest. Colleen’s parents are Bob and Sandra Shanklin, best known as the Lighthouse People. They have photographed every existing lighthouse in the United States, and therefore had a great database of their own for comparison.
Negotiating the bits and pieces of correspondence that had been left behind had to have been no small feat. But with great luck, and the assistance of lighthouse historian, author and photographer Candace Clifford, MacNeney found the last little bit of proof that the lantern had actually survived demolition and was sent to another district.
Calling Attention To the Plight of Lighthouses
It would have been good if Tim Harrison, publisher of Lighthouse Digest, had taken his moment in the sun to publicize the plight of some of our lighthouses. Instead, his comments on the story were more self congratulatory for having “scooped” the news media with this story. This would have been an ideal occasion to push for the need of preserving our past, whether through finding and archiving these fragmentary papers, collecting old photographs, and collating the history, which he and others at the magazine do so well.
Photo Credit: Point Montara Lightstation by Gordon Landon. Some rights reserved.
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