Point Arena Lighthouse

Point Arena Lighthouse marks Point Arena — where the California coast bends from northwesterly to due north — a turning point that made a light here essential once redwood-lumber shipping out of the North Coast picked up in the 1850s and 1860s. The original brick tower and keepers' dwelling went up in 1869–70 and first lit on May 1, 1870, one of three tall coastal towers built in that style in California alongside Pigeon Point and Piedras Blancas.

The Great Earthquake of April 18, 1906 tore the brick tower apart — a keeper on duty described it swinging violently north and south before the lens and reflectors shattered on the lantern room floor. Learning from that failure, the Lighthouse Board rebuilt in reinforced concrete: iron bars woven into wooden forms and filled with poured concrete, raised by a mule-powered elevator. The new 115-foot tower — the first lighthouse in the country built this way — was completed in 1908 and fitted with a first-order Fresnel lens that produced a double flash every six seconds, turned by a clockwork mechanism and a 160-pound falling weight the keepers wound by hand every two hours.

The light station was automated in 1977. The nonprofit Point Arena Lighthouse Keepers took over the site in 1984 and were awarded ownership in 2000; the station was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. Today the tower, fog signal building museum, and 23-acre grounds are open for self-guided and tower-climb visits, run entirely on visitor admission and membership support rather than any state or federal parks budget.

The climb itself is 145 steps up a spiral staircase to the lantern room gallery, where a volunteer guide lets you step outside onto the balcony for 360-degree views — the coastline you drove in on, the Devil's Punchbowl sinkhole, and Arena Rock just offshore — before taking you up to the light. The original first-order Fresnel lens now sits in the Fog Signal Building museum, moved from the tower during a 2008–2010 renovation, alongside exhibits on shipwrecks, the lumber trade, and Pomo history, and a self-guided Outdoor Museum route crosses the 23-acre grounds. On the Saturday nearest each full moon, a separate ticketed evening tour climbs the tower by moonlight, with sparkling cider or champagne at the top.

The bluff the lighthouse sits on is actively eroding; the Light Station has discussed that the tower may need to be moved back from the edge within a few decades if funding allows.