Added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 31, 1980

Usually nomination forms for the National Register of Historic Places are dryer than a saltine cracker. Most of the Point Vicente Lighthouse’s nomination, written by Commander Walter Evans of the Eleventh Coast Guard District, follows suit. It’s a simple physical description of the lighthouse, the materials it’s made of, the storage buildings and houses that surround it. This is a representative paragraph, comprising just one sentence: “All three houses contain full basements.” 

But then something happens in the Statement of Significance section – Evans’s prose comes alive, and after a paragraph of exposition, he launches into a full-on ghost story: 

As a lighthouse so gentle on the eyes, one would never think it to have been bothered by wraiths – but it was. The ghost story, did however, have a happy ending. Though ghosts continue to haunt most lighthouses until their demise, the one at Vicente didn’t have a chance to gather its usual length of rattling chains and eerie noises. From the time the lighthouse was established, the keepers complained of a strange apparition of a woman in flowing gowns walking about the exterior by nightfall – reputedly searching for her lover who had been lost in a shipwreck many years earlier.

Most of the keepers had been willing to let the spirit be, until a younger assistant was assigned to the station. His inquiring mind motivated him to solve the mystery. A spoiler of sorts, he, after careful study and examination, came to the conclusion that the ghost was created by an unusual reflection of the light as it rotated. The structure of the lighthouse lens was such that it threw an arc in a reversed parenthesis causing the ghostly image to appear. The reflection when seen from a distance of 80 to 200 yards bore a remarkable resemblence [sic] to a lady in a long gown. 

The young keeper was gratified with his findings but the older attendants refused to let such a simple explanation lay the wraith to rest. Even today, some claim that the ghostly lady still haunts the lighthouse, despite its automated status.

Walter Evans, from the Point Vicente Lighthouse’s NRHP nomination form 

I suppose it wouldn’t be a proper lighthouse without a decent ghost story attached to it, but even without her, the Point Vicente Lighthouse has a compelling enough history.

At least as far back as 1907, shipmasters had complained of the danger of taking their ships south from Point Hueneme past the Palos Verdes peninsula without an aid to navigation. The Point Fermin Lighthouse existed on the southeast portion of the peninsula, but wrecks and near-misses were all too common in the Portuguese Bend area further northwest – a 1916 Los Angeles Times article points to the wreck of the Newberg and the grounding of the Santa Rosa in the area. 

That same year, Congress set aside $80,000 to purchase 12 acres of land on Point Vicente and build a lighthouse and fog signal. The project was delayed for years while the government haggled with Palos Verdes’s owner, the wealthy banker Frank Vanderlip. He had planned an artists’ colony for the bluffside location, modeled after the Tuscan village of Neri. But by 1921 the title had been acquired by the government, construction bids opened in late 1922, and in 1924 construction began on the lighthouse, fog signal building, a 12,000-gallon water tank and three small houses for the lighthouse keepers (all designed in Spanish colonial revival style, in keeping with the Palos Verdes Art Jury’s requirements). Point Vicente Lighthouse was formally opened on April 14, 1926. According to the Times, the superintendent of the US Bureau of Lighthouses declared it “the finest in the United States.” 

This lighthouse functions as both a landfall light and a guide for boats heading to the Port of LA in San Pedro, just east of Point Vicente. This lighthouse and the one at Point Fermin were the last guide lights you’d see heading south down the coast, before you got to the LA harbor. As such, it played a big role in the growth of the shipping trade in Los Angeles. Merchants bringing goods across the Pacific, or down the west coast, had a reliable way to navigate around Point Vicente on their way into the harbor at San Pedro.  

For its first 13 years of operation, Point Vicente was operated by the US Lighthouse Service. The Service merged with the US Coast Guard in 1939, and the lighthouse has been staffed by the Coast Guard ever since. 

As lighthouses go, Point Vicente is a pretty normal one. It’s white, cylindrical, 68 feet high, made of reinforced concrete. On the inside, a staircase spirals its way up five stories to the lantern room at the top. These days there’s an energy-efficient, solar-powered LED bulb & lens apparatus installed. Originally though, a 500-watt bulb shone through the third-order clamshell Fresnel lens, rotated by a motor that was powered by an electrical plant on premises. The rotating beam flashed twice every 20 seconds. Early reports indicated the lighthouse emitted an 800,000-candlepower light, visible some 20 miles out to sea, its power exceeded by just one beacon on the west coast, at Point Sur near Monterey. By the late ‘70s, Point Vicente was said to have a 1000-watt bulb, making it the most powerful lighthouse in Southern California at 1.1 million-candlepower (or 2.1 million candlepower, according to a document I saw on-site). 

There is some disagreement as to when exactly the lens was manufactured, and how it got to Palos Verdes; the NRHP form indicates it was first used in an Alaskan lighthouse in 1914, then sent to Palos Verdes in 1925. Other accounts suggest it was in Alaska for 40 years before coming south, while the Lighthouse Friends website asserts it was sent straight to Point Vicente. Either way, we know that the original lens was constructed in Paris by the firm of Barbier, Benard and Turenne, a renowned manufacturer of lighthouse lenses that was in operation from 1862-1982. That Fresnel lens stayed in the lantern room for 73 years, until it was removed in 2019 and placed on display in the Point Vicente Interpretive Center, just north of the lighthouse. 

Like any other lighthouse, Point Vicente has adapted over the years as times and technology have changed. During WWII, the bulb was swapped for a much less powerful 25-watt light, and blackout curtains were hung in case any Japanese vessels were nearby. A radio station was added around 1935, acting as a relay center for distress calls coming from mariners at sea. When transistors came onto the scene, the radio station became obsolete, and it was officially decommissioned in 1980. The same goes for the fog horn, which was dismantled some time in the early 2000s. The old fog horn building now houses a small museum packed with nifty lighthouse ephemera. 

As for the lighthouse keepers themselves, Point Vicente had lighthouse tenders living on site from the day it opened in 1926 up through 1971, when it became fully automated, and remotely operated. The former lightkeepers’ dwellings have been used to house Coast Guard personnel, but are now vacant. The Coast Guard only has to stop by a few times a year on maintenance runs; they also operate a monthly open house on the second Saturday of each month.

Now let’s talk about those Point Vicente lightkeepers for a minute. Kraig Anderson of LighthouseFriends.com dug deep into official records for some juicy details about some friction between Point Vicente’s first head keeper, George L’Hommedieu, and several of the assistants he had over his five years stationed there. 

In December of 1925, even before the lighthouse officially opened, First Assistant Keeper Harry Davis notified the district superintendent that L’Hommedieu had used “profane language” and had left the station without notifying him. Four years later, Second Assistant Keeper Raymond Deurloo submitted a series of serious complaints about L’Hommedieu: that he had been drunk on the job, failed to pull down the lantern room curtains after sunrise, and also threatened to kill First Assistant Keeper Frederick Zimmermann and his wife. All of this apparently resulted from a confrontation between L’Hommedieu’s collie and the Zimmermanns’ cats. According to Zimmermann, L’Hommedieu said to him “Hit me, and if you ever hit my dog, or he gets hurt, I have a gun, and I’ll fill you and your wife full of lead.” Yikes! 

The response from Assistant Superintendent FJ Otter, assigned to investigate the matter, is amusing in a very paternalistic, very 1930s kind of way:

It is known that the Keeper has at times a violent temper which might be overlooked by an assistant of proper temperament, and that Mrs. L’Hommedieu the wife of the Keeper, interjects herself into the Government affairs and has caused a considerable amount of the trouble at the Station. … It is believed that friction will always arise at this Station at intervals due to the ill feelings between the Keeper and Assistants, and particularly between their wives.

-Report of Assistant Superintendent FJ Otter, quoted on LighthouseFriends.com

In 1930 L’Hommedieu was transferred to Piedras Blancas Lighthouse in San Simeon, where he worked without incident until retiring in 1934. He was replaced by Anton Trittinger, who served an illustrious career at Point Vicente for 15 years. From 1933-35, Trittinger earned a district efficiency pennant for having the best-maintained station in CA.

It’s been over 60 years since the ghostly lady of the lighthouse was banished via paint and contact paper. Her old home hasn’t been occupied by a living person since the early 1970s. But the Point Vicente Lighthouse still stands sentry on the peninsula, guiding ships into the Port of LA as it has for nearly a century. 

Oh, and one final tidbit: This being Los Angeles, of course the Point Vicente Lighthouse featured in the films Pearl Harbor and Wonder Woman, and a music video by Olivia Newton-John.

Sources & Recommended Reading

+ Anderson, Kraig: “Point Vicente Lighthouse” (LighthouseFriends.com)

+ Castrobran, Kim: “The Hollywood Lighthouse Shines the Spotlight on Stars We Love” (Palos Verdes Pulse, August 9, 2022)

+ Evans, Walter: Point Vicente Lighthouse’s NRHP nomination form 

+ “’Ghost’ of Lighthouse Will Dance No More” (Los Angeles Times, November 13, 1960 – via ProQuest)

+ “Giant Lantern Soon to Guide Ships: Point Vincente Lighthouse Nearly Ready to Operate” (Los Angeles Times, March 2, 1926 – via ProQuest)

+ Gnerre, Sam: “ South Bay History: The Point Vicente lighthouse has served as a beacon since 1926” (Daily Breeze, October 16, 2018)

+ Hillinger, Charles: “Lighthouse’s ‘Ghost’ Dances Away Into Fog: Once ‘Haunted,’” (Los Angeles Times, July 9, 1962 –via ProQuest)

+ “Lighthouse Tender’s Idea of Heaven Is Discovered in Southern California” (Los Angeles Times, December 19, 1926 – via ProQuest)

+ Meares, Hadley: “The lighthouse keepers of Los Angeles” (Curbed LA, August 4, 2016)

+ Megowan, Bruce & Maureen: “History of Rancho Palos Verdes” (maureenmegowan.com)

+ “New Coast Light Now in Operation: Friend of Navigators” (Los Angeles Times, June 13, 1926 – via ProQuest)

+ “Point Vicente Lighthouse” (PalosVerdes.com) 

+ “Request Money for Lighthouse” (Los Angeles Times, March 23, 1916 – via ProQuest)