Lime Point Light Station
The Lime Point Light is one in 1883 as a foghorn facility built in 1900 and is a beacon advanced navigation signs at the northern foot of the Golden Gate Bridge . The facility was automated in 1961 and is now operated by the United States Coast Guard . Some of the original buildings have since been demolished, leaving only the Nebelhorn building. It is the last remaining building of its kind in California .
Location and importance for shipping
The Lime Point Light Station is located on a reef-like ledge on the northern edge of the Golden Gate, only about 20 feet (about 6 meters) wide and 100 feet (about 30 meters) into the water . This strait is the link between the San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean is and therefore is one of the busiest transport routes the Maritime in California . At the same time, it is the only place along the northern California Pacific coast where fog can penetrate unhindered through the California coastal mountains into the California long valley . For this reason, visibility is often poor at the entrance to San Francisco Bay, which, before the advent of radar and satellite navigation , repeatedly led to shipping accidents in the strait.
history
Built as a fog horn system in 1883
The Lime Point Light Station was built in 1883 in the form of a one-story foghorn building with an attached two-story residential building for the two guards of the facility and their families. Originally it was only intended to be used as a fog horn system, as the fog represented the greatest threat to shipping in the Golden Gate. The operation of the two steam-powered fog horns was ensured by a fire chamber into which the guards had to shovel more than 150,000 pounds (around 68 metric tons) of coal annually. The water required to generate steam was piped from a natural spring into a 20,000 gallon (around 76,000 liter) tank and held there.
The guards worked 6-hour shifts and thus had to ensure that the facility was on standby for 24 hours. In addition to operating the foghorn in poor visibility for shipping, the guards' job was to notify the sea rescue teams at Fort Point on the opposite side of the Golden Gate of any accidents . To do this, they gave five to six short and then one long whistle signals with the fog horn.
Expansions in the first decades of the 20th century
In 1900 a beacon was added to the facility, which went into operation on November 26th of the same year. In the first few years, the light beam was generated using a 300-millimeter lens illuminated by an oil lamp . However, experiments with petroleum began as early as 1903 , which was used to operate both the beacon and the foghorn until the system was electrified in 1932.
In 1910, the United States Army erected a rectangular building with a flat roof and mounted a large searchlight on it. This searchlight - of the same construction as its two counterparts at Point Bonita - fulfilled the function of locating missing United States Navy vessels . Its light was brighter than that of the Lime Point Light Station beacon.
In 1923 the Lighthouse Board decided to put a navigation sign at Point Diablo. Point Diablo Light , about halfway between the Lime Point Light Station and Point Bonita Light on the edge of the Pacific coast, was built in the form of a small white building in the middle of the cliff. The signal station, which can be reached from the water via a steep staircase, was connected to the Lime Point Light Station via a telephone and a power cable. This enabled the guards at the Lime Point facility to monitor the correct operation of Point Diablo Light and to operate its beacon and foghorn from a distance.
Lime Point from the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge until today
In 1939, two years after the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge , the operation of the Lime Point Light Station - like that of all other navigation signs in California - passed into the hands of the United States Coast Guard . Lime Point was now directly under the northern piers of the bridge and had been extended several times by adding additional buildings. Despite the fact that tourists from the bridge kept throwing empty bottles and other rubbish at the facility, Lime Point was a popular stop among Coast Guard staff. The guards lived with their families in rooms that were modernly equipped for that time and used their free time to fish in the Pacific. The facility was connected to San Francisco via the Golden Gate Bridge and via a road to the town of Sausalito in Marin County .
Just before Christmas 1959, the Lime Point Light Station was robbed. One night, the surprised Coast Guard guards were suddenly confronted with an armed man who took their money away from them. The robber then disappeared and fired two warning shots in the air as he escaped. Ralph Shanks and Lisa Woo Shanks suspect in their book Guardians of the Golden Gate , published in 1990, that the incident could have been the world's only robbery of a lighthouse complex.
On June 3, 1960, the cargo ship India Bear rammed the lighthouse station in thick fog. It was only at the last minute that the captain of the ship noticed that the India Bear was about 180 meters off course. Despite an immediately initiated reverse maneuver, the ship's bow hit the ledge. The Lime Point Light Station sustained $ 7,500 damage in the accident (the facility's toilet in particular was completely destroyed), while the damage to the freighter amounted to $ 60,000. In a subsequent investigation into the incident, strong winds, which made the fog horn signal ineffective, and currents in the strait were identified as the causes of the accident.
A year after the incident, the Lime Point Light Station was automated and the last Coast Guard lighthouse keepers left the station. In the course of this automation, large parts of the system were demolished, so that today only the foghorn building with an electrically operated beacon remains.
literature
- Ralph Shanks / Lisa Woo Shanks: Guardians of the Golden Gate. Lighthouses and Lifeboat Stations of San Francisco Bay , Petaluma 1990, ISBN 0-930268-08-3 , pp. 150-159.
Web links
- Lime Point Lighthouse, California on the pages of lighthousefriends.com.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Ralph Shanks / Lisa Woo Shanks: Guardians of the Golden Gate. Lighthouses and Lifeboat Stations of San Francisco Bay , Petaluma 1990, ISBN 0-930268-08-3 , p. 151.
- ↑ On this and the following cf. Shanks / Shanks, Guardians of the Golden Gate , p. 152.
- ↑ On this and the following cf. Shanks / Shanks, Guardians of the Golden Gate , p. 153.
- ↑ On this and the following cf. Shanks / Shanks, Guardians of the Golden Gate , p. 153 and p. 155.
- ↑ On this and the following cf. Shanks / Shanks, Guardians of the Golden Gate , p. 156ff.
- ↑ Shanks / Shanks speak in their book Guardians of the Golden Gate that Lime Point was a dream for anglers ("a fisherman's dream", p. 156).
- ^ "It may have been the only" lighthouse robbery "in history.", Shanks / Shanks, Guardians of the Golden Gate , p. 156.
- ↑ On this and the following cf. Shanks / Shanks, Guardians of the Golden Gate , pp. 157f.
- ^ Shanks / Shanks, Guardians of the Golden Gate , p. 158.
- ↑ On this and the following cf. Shanks / Shanks, Guardians of the Golden Gate , p. 159.
- ^ Shanks / Shanks, Guardians of the Golden Gate , p. 159.
Coordinates: 37 ° 49 ′ 32.1 " N , 122 ° 28 ′ 42" W.