The whistle commenced operation in May 1874, and the additional keeper required to staff the station was temporarily housed in a woodshed until a new dwelling was finished in 1877.Įarthquakes in 18 caused considerable damage to the lighthouse. Funds for relocating the light were not immediately provided, but Congress allocated $10,000 on Mafor a steam fog whistle on the north spit. In one year alone, over 1,100 hours of fog were noted at the entrance to Humboldt Bay, and in 1872, a bell boat was stationed off the entrance to the harbor to help mariners cross the bar in foggy weather. In this view of the case the board has under consideration the propriety of removing this light to a point about four miles south of the entrance to Humboldt Bay, known as Table Bluff.Īnother reason noted for moving the light was the fog that frequently shrouded the spits and rendered the entrance light ineffective. The breakwater of logs which was constructed last year seems to have answered the purpose of protecting the foundation of the structure, although the sand on the spit is constantly changing, and it is not improbable that the breakwater may at some future time be washed away and the stability of the lighthouse endangered. The low-lying site selected for the lighthouse proved problematic and plans to relocate the light were soon formulated as noted in this excerpt from the 1867 Annual Report of the Lighthouse Board: Johnson, took over the job of keeper and remained at the station until 1863. Keeper Johnson reliably performed his duty for just over three years before his death on February 25, 1859.

Due to problems with contractors and difficulty in transporting supplies to the site, three of the second group of eight lighthouses commissioned for the west coast were actually completed before Humboldt Harbor Lighthouse. On the evening of December 20, 1856, Keeper John Johnson climbed the winding stairs from the dwelling to the lantern room and lit the lamp in the fourth-order Fresnel lens for the first time, making Humboldt Harbor Lighthouse the last of the original eight west coast lights to become operational. Trapezoidal panes of glass were used in the lantern room, rather than the typical square panes. Old photographs of the lighthouse show a distinct circular ring at a height where the lantern room was placed on similar lighthouses, leading to speculation that at some point the tower of the Humboldt Bay Lighthouse was extended to increase its range, but the tower was tall from the beginning, giving the light a focal plane of fifty-three feet above the Pacific Ocean. While other similarly designed lighthouses were built atop high bluffs or hills, where a tall tower was not necessary, Humboldt Harbor Lighthouse was built on the beach. Young that called for a one-and-a-half-story dwelling built around a central tower. The contract for the first west coast lighthouses was awarded to Gibbons and Kelly, and most of them were constructed using a design by Ammi B. The actual site selected for the light was a parcel of land on the spit just north of the bay’s entrance, where it could serve both as a harbor light and a seacoast light. The town of Eureka was established along the shores of the northern portion of the bay in 1850, and just one year later, Humboldt Bay was chosen to receive one of the first eight lighthouses commissioned for the west coast. Two long thin spits separate the bay from the ocean, and a narrow opening between them provides the bay’s only entrance from the ocean. Humboldt Bay is the largest bay in California north of San Francisco.

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