Telling the Story

It is Tuesday morning and we are sitting in the Laundromat doing a load of clothes.  It would have ben nice to have WiFi here but it didn’t happen so I will send this later.  This is our last day off for three days, but I’m not complaining.  The schedule here is very easy to handle and the work load is very easy.  Our interpretive skills are barely tested here.  There are three different positions at the lighthouse the first spot is for telling how the area is laid out and what life was like here on this windy and lonely place.  Then we send the visitors to the building attached to the tower.  In what is called the work room and the oil room where the work shift duties are explained.  Following that the visitors are invited to climb the 64 circular stairs to the lantern room where the Fresnel lens and the light are explained.  This is the only lighthouse in Oregon and one of the few elsewhere that allows visitors to be in close proximity to the Fresnel lens.  The lens is worth the trip to the top alone.  The view is just a bonus.

     The time allotment of each station is supposed to be 3-5 minutes.   There is so much to show and tell about that it is difficult to limit yourself as a docent.  As the summer progresses and the crowds increase, it will be more necessary, but now that the numbers are still low we are telling a longer version of the story for our visitors.  

Cape Blanco Lighthouse

Cape Blanco was naAguilar in 1603. He named the cape for its steep white med by the Spanish Captain Martin de cliffs. The cape lies roughly 60 miles north of the Oregon-California border, just north of Port Orford. The western-most point of Oregon juts into the Pacific in a location plagued by heavy winter rains and summer fog. Lighthouse Service engineer R.S. Williamson reported that rain at the cape was "equalled at only two other points in the United States where records are kept." Winds at the Cape have been measured at 100 miles per hour. Weather and geography made Cape Blanco a likely candidate for a lighthouse. A light was first proposed in 1864. Work began on the lighthouse in 1868. Building supplies arrived aboard the schooner Bunkalation in May 1870. The vessel was not fully unloaded when it was beached in a storm. The remaining supplies were lost, and not replaced until July 1870. The 59-tower and dwelling were completed in December 1870. The tower housed a $20,000 first-order Fresnel lens. At 245 feet above sea level, the light is the highest on the Oregon Coast. Despite the construction of the lighthouse, wrecks continued to occur at Cape Blanco. The passenger steamer Alaskan was lost in 1889 with at least 31 of its passengers and crew. In 1903, the steamer South Portland was lost. The captain of the vessel was found to be negligent for leaving on the first lifeboat, despite one comment in the inquiry that the chief mate had requested the captain lead the first lifeboat. In 1919 the oil tanker J. A. Chanslor was lost - 36 crewmen died and 30,000 barrels of oil spilled. Cape Blanco was isolated and difficult to access. Until a road was constructed in 1886, the only access was by the hazardous southern beach, or the beach road to Port Orford which was accessible only at low tide and crossed quicksand. For these reasons Cape Blanco was not a popular assignment for most keepers. Two keepers who succeeded in making Cape Blanco their home were James Langlois and James Hughes. Langlois served for 42 years at Cape Blanco, starting in 1875 as assistant keeper to Charles Peirce (formerly of Yaquina Bay light). When Peirce left in 1883, Langlois was promoted to principal keeper. It is said that he never set foot in any lighthouse other than Cape Blanco. He retired in 1918. James Hughes arrived in 1888 as first assistant and stayed at the lighthouse for 38 years.  His parents, Patrick and Jane Hughes, ran a thriving dairy business at Cape Blanco. Their Victorian home still stands. When living quarters at the station became too cramped for the Langlois family and the Hughes family, Hughes bought his own dairy ranch nearby. Hughes tended to both the lighthouse and the ranch. A second residence at the station was eventually built in 1909.
In 1936, the first-order lens was replaced by a second-order lens crafted by Henry Lapaute. The original residences were replaced by more functional Coast Guard housing. The light was eventually automated and most of the surrounding structures removed. In 1992, the lens was a victim of vandalism. Two local teenagers broke into the tower and smashed several of the prisms. The Coast Guard looked nationwide for someone to repair the lens, and settled on Hardin Optical in nearby Bandon. Despite difficulty in finding glass matching the characteristics of the original, the lens was successfully restored in 1994. In 2002-2003, the Cape Blanco lighthouse underwent a thorough restoration. The tower was restored in keeping with the original specifications. The lens was removed and restored by Hardin Optical, Inc. of Bandon, OR. Scaffolding was placed around the tower, and the old paint removed. The masonry was repaired. The brick mortar was analyzed in order to use the identical composition for repairs. The roof was replaced, and the pinnacle and vent ball restored. The interior and exterior were repainted. The light was officially re-opened on August 22, 2003 and is open for tours 10am - 3:30pm everyday except Monday.

Spring on the coast

It's spring on the coast.  The weather has not warmed up much.  It has been calm.  This is normally a very windy spot because the cape juts out into the ocean.  So it is the perfect place for a lighthouse.  The light is there to warn sailors to stay away from the numerous rocks that are scattered around the ocean below.  Many ships have been lost on those rocks.  That is why the lighthouse was put there in the first place. 

  The flags are there to greet us everyday.

 

Views of a Fresnel Lens

Crash

Right now we have a friend, Sal, living in our house.  She is needs a place and we are happy to have someone occupying it and watching over it.  It’s a good thing she is there because things keep happening.  She has replaced the valve in one toilet.  The TV stopped working while we were gone last winter.  The fire alarm has been replaced because it malfunctioned three times.  Sal wasn’t home the first time it occurred and came home to the fire department parked out front.

    So when I got a message from Sal this week, I wondered, “What now?”   It was late at night and she heard a terrible crash.  After letting her heart slow down she walked around the house looking for the disaster.  She found it in the laundry room.  An upper cabinet had come off the wall, crashed and spilled the contents all over the floor.  The bad news was that the “contents” was dishes and glasses.  Our Mikasa eight place setting,  our Phalzgraf Christmas dishes, and worse of all, our antique Fiesta Ware dishes.  Some of these belonged to my Aunt Ruth.  R and I have been gathering enough pieces to have a complete set for 12.  Our household State Farm Insurance does not cover breakage so we are on our own.   When we go home tomorrow, we will do an inventory to see how much we want to replace.  I will miss the bright colors of the Fiesta.   

Walking the Dogs

   Walked the dogs (the girls) as usual this morning.  It seems like I can’t sleep much past 6:30.  Of course they are always willing to go out and explore.  There are so many sights and sounds and, best of all, tastes, out there to enjoy as a dog.  It would be interesting, I think, to have the sense of smell that a dog has.  What would it be like?  I have heard that for person with autism, life is like having a hundred televisions, all on different channels, on at the same time.  I imagine for dogs it is the same.  My doxies are always sniffing; always “on the hunt”.  We will be walking along and one or both of them will reverse their direction and check out a spot on a shrub or something lying in the road dead, or course.  Maybe it would be such a good idea to have that sensitive of a nose.

    No matter which direction we start out going, we always seem to end up at the ocean.  There is a trail right along the cliff and we seem to get there eventually.  This morning sitting on the picnic table I noticed a small flock of Brown Pelicans feeding in the water near the beach.  Then I noticed more and then more again.  There was another larger group feeding further out.  I followed a few as they left the group and slowly made their way toward the beach.  I love to watch pelicans fly.  They fly across the water as low as they can.  If they had belly buttons they would be slightly damp. 

    Flight to a pelican seems to be the easiest thing to do.  They beat their wings for a few flaps and then g..l..i..d..e along for several seconds and then do it again.  If there is more than one pelican, they fly in formation, all the same height, all at the same speed, all with the same lack of effort.  I have heard that a group of pelicans is called a squadron.  How appropriate that name is.

     The small squadron made its way toward the beach and landed among other pelicans and some gulls.  It was time to stand around with friends and tell fishing stories while preening feathers and digesting the fish that had just been consumed

Fiesta in Distress

Fiesta in Distress