The .5-mile, round trip hike provides views of the last permanent lighthouse built on the West Coast. The light was turned on in 1932, and remains on to this day, to warn vessels of Anacapa's rocky shores.

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.
 

Lighthouse 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.
 

Fresnel Lens

Constructed in 1932, the Anacapa Island Light Station featured a third-order Fresnel lens, the most advanced example of lens technology at the time.

In 1822 the Frenchman Augustin Fresnel (fray-nel) improved the dioptric, or refractive, lens used in many lighthouse beacons. Resembling a giant beehive surrounding a single lamp, the glass prisms at the top and bottom refracted the light, sending it out in a narrow sheet. The dioptric section is a round bull's-eye panel that produces the bright flash of the light. The light appeared brighter and more concentrated, giving it a much more effective and farther range. In the United States Fresnel lenses were made in seven sizes, or orders, the first-order being the largest.

In 1932 a rotating, catadioptric, third-order Fresnel lens with a 1000-watt incandescent bulb assembly was installed in the Anacapa Lighthouse. Manufactured between 1900 and 1903 by the Chance Brothers Company in England, it was transported to the United States and stored with other lenses to be used in west coast lighthouses. As each lighthouse was built, a lens was taken out of storage and installed in the lighthouse tower. Powered by diesel generator, its 600,000 candlepower had a visibility of 24 miles!

Until the 1960s the light station required a crew of 15 to 25 people to care for the lens and tower. The lighthouse was automated to run for several months at a time in the 1960s. An automatic lamp changer halved the number of times a tender would have to change a burned-out bulb. The brass structure of the lens was painted black because it was no longer regularly polished.

In 1989, the U.S. Coast Guard replaced the original Fresnel lens with a plastic, solar-powered unit now used in the lighthouse. These modern lenses are small versions of Augustin Fresnel's invention, using the same technology employed by the nineteenth-century physicist.

You can see the original Fresnel lens on display at the Anacapa Island visitor center. 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.
 

Fog Signal

The original diaphone fog signal once stood on the roof of this one-story building, but now the automated electronic device is less conspicuous.

Funds had been allotted for fog signal diaphones and their installation in late 1931. Power would be generated on the island. Technicians set the two-tone diaphone to blast for three seconds on a 30 second cycle. The resonators of the diaphone were depressed slightly in order to counteract the usual upward bending of the sonic beam.

The S. S. Golden Sun of the American-Hawaiian Steamship Company reported in 1933 that this was one of the best fog signals it had ever experienced. On the negative side, however, the S. S. Lightburne reported that the "Anacapan [sic] fog signal is 3 second blast and 27 second silent and Pt. Hueneme fog signal is 4 second blast and 26 seconds silent period, consequently naturally having expected to make Anacapa we thought had done so and hauled ship NE'ly. to pass light to Starboard hand. About this time fog lifted slightly and we seen that fog signal was on Pt. Hueneme and proceeded on our voyage accordingly. Comment in question is that since the blast and silent per periods of the Lights mentioned have a difference of only one second it is confusing in identifying either in a fog."

At this, the Port Hueneme characteristic was changed.