Added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 13, 1972

The day I visited the Point Fermin Lighthouse, the Festival of Philippine Arts & Culture had taken over Point Fermin Park. Thousands of people thronged the area, snacking on lumpia and halo-halo, checking out vendor stalls, generally just enjoying the communal vibes and nice weather. It was loud. It was active. It was a totally different scene than what sisters Mary & Ella Smith encountered when they began their jobs as the first keepers of the Point Fermin Lighthouse in 1874. 

This lighthouse is the sole extant example of a lighthouse from that era that you’ll find between San Diego and San Francisco. It was the first major navigation aid established around the San Pedro harbor, at a time when the port was becoming increasingly active. In 1869, the “Father of the Port of LA,” Phineas Banning, had completed SoCal’s first railroad, a 21-mile track between the harbor and downtown intended to speed up commerce (keep in mind, this was seven years before the transcontinental railroad reached Los Angeles). Banning also secured federal funds to dredge the harbor and create a large breakwater, both of which made it much safer for commercial ships to enter the harbor and do their business.

The harbor also needed a lighthouse to help ships avoid the bluffs while approaching the bay. Following the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848, entrepreneurial traders and ranchers in Southern California amped up the flow of goods to the miners up north. And without any navigational aids, plenty of ships – and people and merchandise along with them – were lost to shipwrecks along California’s craggy coastline. One notable wreck was the American brig Danube, which crashed in the San Pedro bay on Christmas Eve, 1828 (one of the men who came to salvage it was Michael White, a British expat with an incredible story of his own). Even after Point Fermin had its beacon, it could be a dangerous peninsula to navigate. The British ship Respigadera and lumber schooner David C. Meyer wrecked right off the point in 1888 and 1926, respectively. 

As early as 1854, Banning lobbied Congress to build a lighthouse. $10,000 was appropriated for a lighthouse and fog signal by 1858, but the Civil War held things up, as did a series of land disputes from claimants to the parcel on the peninsula that the government had selected. Purchasing the land didn’t work out, so the government went to court to begin condemnation proceedings, essentially forcing the claimants to sell. The government finally gained the rights to the Point Fermin parcel in late 1873. Lumber arrived by ship, and construction work began on February 21, 1874.

Paul J. Pelz, chief draftsman for the US Lighthouse Board, designed Point Fermin Lighthouse in the “stick” substyle of Victorian architecture, typified by hand-carved balustrades and wraparound porches, a profusion of handmade corbels and horizontal wood siding. Inside you’ll find smallish rooms with tall ceilings and wainscoting, each with its defined purpose. A fairly typical Victorian home, but for the five-story tower at its center. That tower housed a gorgeous fourth-order Fresnel lens at the top, rotating to flash a beam of red or white light every 20 seconds, visible for 13 miles out to sea. Originally the light inside came from burning oil; over time Point Fermin switched to kerosene, then petroleum vapor in 1898, then electricity in 1925.

The government liked Pelz’s basic template enough to use it, with modifications, for five other lighthouses built between 1873 and 1874 throughout the country. Two of those (East Brothers in San Francisco Bay and Hereford Light in New Jersey) are still around, should you decide to visit all the Pelz you can on a cross-country roadtrip. Add the Library of Congress in Washington, DC to your itinerary – Pelz designed that too. 

While Pelz intended this lighthouse to be large enough to house two families, only one head keeper stayed at Point Fermin at a time, typically with a spouse or family. First up was the aforementioned Mary Smith, assisted by her sister Ella. The pair had experience: they’d kept the Ediz Hook Lighthouse in Washington state for several years, after their father retired from his position as head keeper. 

The Smith sisters stayed at Point Fermin Lighthouse until 1882, when they resigned owing to the loneliness of life there. And could you blame them? Point Fermin was very sparsely inhabited in those days. San Pedro itself had warehouses and docks and such, but you could only get the most basic of provisions. For better supplies – and, one assumes, conversation – the Smiths had to take a horse and buggy over the muddy roads to Wilmington, seven miles north. 

The post-Smith lightkeeper timeline:

• 1882 – 1904: George N. Shaw. A retired sea captain. Lived there with his wife and daughter, then by himself after his wife died and daughter left for school. First lightkeeper to wear the official US Lighthouse Services uniform, required as of 1884. Shaw planted shade trees around the grounds.
• 1904 – 1916: Irby H. Engels. Moves in with his wife and daughter. Oversaw the installation of indoor plumbing, along with a windmill / tower / tank in the back for water pressure.
• 1917 – 1925: Willie Austin, his wife and their seven kids live at the lighthouse. Mrs. Austin died in 1925 due to complications from an operation; two months later, Willie passed away too, supposedly of a broken heart.
• 1925 – 1927: Thelma Austin, eldest daughter of Willie Austin, took over her dad’s lighthouse keeper duties, assisted by her sister Juanita. They tended the Point Fermin Lighthouse when it was finally electrified in 1925. 

In a fine bit of synchronicity, the last two permanent keepers of the Point Fermin Lighthouse were two sisters who took over from their dad, just as the first two keepers had been. 

A new 8.5-mile breakwater was built in the San Pedro harbor in 1911, accompanied by the new Angel’s Gate lighthouse to usher ships safely between segments of the rocky barrier. 15 years later the Point Vicente Lighthouse joined the South Bay lighthouse club, less than 10 miles away from Point Fermin. According to this 1911 article in the Oakland Tribune, these new, more modern neighbors put Point Fermin Lighthouse in danger of being demolished:

Thankfully, reports of the Point Fermin Lighthouse’s imminent death were exaggerated, though it did go through some major changes in the 1920s. The US government leased the land around the lighthouse for a city park in 1923. Then in 1927, the City of LA took over operations of the lighthouse itself, and placed a park superintendent at Point Fermin to look after it. While the US Lighthouse Services (and later its successor, the US Coast Guard) continued to own the property, the lighthouse would never again be operated by a federal government employee. 

The light at Point Fermin Lighthouse continued to rotate until December 9, 1941, two days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the US was plunged into World War II. The US Coast Guard turned off the light to thwart enemy vessels from invading; the Navy painted the building wartime green, moved the lens to the basement, and converted the top floor into a radar station, which would relay signals to a patrol post at the entrance of the harbor. With its boxy, shed-style design, the thing earned the nickname the “chicken coop.” It outlasted the Navy’s departure in 1948, and stayed in place until the early ‘70s.

Following WWII, the Point Fermin Lighthouse was again leased by the City of LA as a residence for a park superintendent, but the light was never turned on again. Advancements in radar, plus those newer Point Vicente & Angels’s Gate lighthouses made the aging Point Fermin Lighthouse obsolete. The Coast Guard installed a beacon on a pole right above the bluff which accomplished the lighthouse’s job more cheaply and efficiently, but with significantly less style or romance. 

There was once again talk of demolishing the lighthouse in the late 1960s. This time two San Pedro locals, William Olesen and John Olguin (director of the Cabrillo Marine Museum), formed the Point Fermin Lighthouse Committee to rally their fellow lighthouse lovers to protect it. Their first task was to get the lighthouse added to the National Register, which happened in 1972. They were less successful in their attempts to convince the City of LA to formally take over ownership from the Coast Guard. But they did get the WWII-era “chicken coop” removed, replaced it with a new lantern room, and restored the whole lighthouse based on the original blueprints, just in time for the centennial celebration in November of 1974. For its 100th birthday the public enjoyed dancing, a military cannon salute, folk dancing, a ceremonial lamp-lighting – even a six-foot-high birthday cake. 

From the late ‘70s until the early 2000s, Point Fermin Lighthouse was housing for a park superintendent. In 2002-3, the city spent over $2 million on a full restoration, with the intent of turning it into a public museum. The whole thing was retrofitted to be earthquake safe, reroofed and got plumbing and electrical upgrades. Ancillary buildings were disassembled and rebuilt with sturdier foundations, and a maintenance yard was paved over for a parking lot. Finally, on November 1, 2003, the Point Fermin Lighthouse threw open its doors to visitors for the first time since the days of the original lightkeepers, before WWII.

There was just one thing missing: the Fresnel lens. Nobody could confirm exactly what had happened to the one that was removed from the lantern room after Pearl Harbor. 

Back in the ‘70s, Olesen & Olguin wanted to bring it back home for the lighthouse’s centennial. They knew it had been stored in the basement when the lighthouse went dark, but then the trail went cold. UNTIL they had a chance encounter at a restaurant with someone who tipped them off to a Fresnel lens hanging out in the office of a real estate agent named Louis Busch, up north in Malibu.

The story is pretty wild: when Olesen & Olguin contacted Busch, he told them that he’d received the lens from the son of an old buddy of his, a locally famous lifeguard captain named “Cap” George Watkins. Watkins had died in 1966, and his son delivered the lens to Mr. Busch’s office to honor their friendship. As it turns out, the Coast Guard had loaned the lens to Watkins so he could use it as the centerpiece of a nautical museum on the Santa Monica Pier. But when the pier was damaged in a storm, Watkins took the lens to his makeshift home in Malibu, a popular celebrity hang in the ‘50s that was partially built out of a tugboat. 

Busch knew most of this history, but he hadn’t seen enough evidence to conclusively prove that the lens in his office was the Point Fermin Lighthouse lens. In 2006, Coast Guard Auxiliary member Joanna Nevesny and Fresnel lens expert Jim Edward examined Busch’s lens. They determined that the unique placement of the screw holes on the lens matched this 1912 photo of the one mounted at the Point Fermin Lighthouse. So on November 13, 2006, Busch happily handed over the lens to members of the Point Fermin Lighthouse Society. It was all captured on camera for a moving episode of the Huell Howser show California’s Gold. Ever since, the lens has been on display in the house museum on the bottom floor of Point Fermin Lighthouse. 

The National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000 opened up the possibility that the Coast Guard could transfer ownership of the lighthouse to another non-government entity for education, recreation or preservation. The Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks submitted an application, as did three nonprofits with missions that had nothing to do with lighthouses. Given the City of LA’s long history with the lighthouse, it’s perhaps no surprise that they won out. 

The Coast Guard formally deeded the Point Fermin Lighthouse to the City of LA in late 2018. It’s now overseen by the Point Fermin Lighthouse Society who keep the grounds up, handle tours and operate the house museum and gift shop. 

The lighthouse is open for visitors Tuesday – Sunday from 1-4pm. Free tours are available on a first-come, first-served basis at 1pm, 2pm and 3pm. Visit the Point Fermin Lighthouse Society website for more info. 

#244: Point Fermin Lighthouse Historic District

Added to the National Register of Historic Places on July 16, 2021

In addition to the Point Fermin Lighthouse itself, there are a number of additional buildings and structures surrounding the lighthouse that help to tell its story, and how Point Fermin fit into the US government’s evolving defense strategy between the World Wars. These buildings were collectively added to the National Register as the Point Fermin Historic District. 

LIGHTHOUSE RELATED

Coal house and privy (ca. 1874): This rectangular building was built for storing coal for heat, and also had a toilet. It was moved in 1912 from the yard behind the lighthouse, and is now attached to the storehouse. Currently it houses office space and the gift shop. 

Storehouse (ca. 1880s): Originally this one-story building was constructed to store provisions for the lighthouse keepers. Windows were added after the City of LA started leasing the lighthouse in 1925, and two doors and casement windows were added in 2003, when it was converted into a bathroom and kitchenette for museum staff. 

Three cisterns (1874-93): These underground cisterns were built to store rainwater captured by the lighthouse’s gutter system. Two are covered in brick domed tops, the third is covered in a metal dome. Residents of the lighthouse would use a hand pump to deliver water from the cisterns to the house. 

Domestic yard (1870s): The lighthouse has been surrounded by lawns to the north, south and east from the beginning. For about a decade beginning in 1907, a windmill, tower and water tank in the north yard provided water pressure for the indoor plumbing.

DEFENSE RELATED

Two base end stations (ca. 1920): Two small concrete semi-subterranean rooms, with iron hatches at the top. Originally they had slits in the sea-facing side for observing the ocean. They both contained a depression position finder, used to triangulate the location of an enemy ship and help the nearby battery complexes aim their guns properly.

Radio Compass Station Generator Building (1920-24): This small concrete building once held equipment that was used to determine where radio signals were coming from. It was often used to check the position of ships, which was useful in the prevention of shipwrecks. Since 1983, the Los Angeles Police Department has leased it as a radio receiver station.

Naval Detection Defense Station (1942): A simple wood-frame building used for barracks and as a Navy radio station. Later it was used as quarters and a rec facility for Coast Guard officers.

Battery Osgood-Farley (1916-1919): This large concrete gun battery was built on a bluff northwest of the lighthouse to protect the Port of LA against enemy ships. It consists of two gun pits, each of which used to contain a 14-inch rifled cannon. There’s also a subterranean bunker that included commander stations, plotting rooms, a powder magazine, shell rooms, a radio room and storage.

Battery Osgood-Farley was one of four batteries built as part of the broader Fort MacArthur (three still survive). It was built at a time when the military was bulking up its fortifications on the west coast, a process accelerated by America’s involvement in World War I. The 14-inch guns were considered obsolete by the 1920s – they were designed to repel an attack by sea, but were fairly useless for ground-to-air combat, and the recoil was so intense that it sometimes shattered the windows of nearby San Pedro residents during practice firing sessions.

The guns were never used in battle and were scrapped in the 1940s. The battery now houses the Fort MacArthur Museum.

Battery Osgood-Farley is separately listed on the National Register of Historic Places…I’ll cover it in more depth eventually! 

Sources & Recommended Reading

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

+ Bookwalter, Jack, Sonoma State University: “Light Stations of California,” NRHP Multiple Property Submission Form (October 16, 1989) 

+ “Danube” (Islapedia entry) 

+ Emery, Dick: For a beloved lighthouse, a genuine birthday party” (Long Beach Press-Telegram, October 30, 1974 – via newspapers.com)

+ Emery, Dick: “Lighthouse spooks make way for museum” (Long Beach Independent, November 5, 1971 – via newspapers.com)

+ Gonzalez, Greg & Daniel Zafran: “Point Vicente and Point Fermin Lighthouse Hauntings” (LA Meekly podcast, May 15, 2020)

+ Harlan, Gabrielle, Johanna Kahn & Hanna Winzenried of Environmental Science Associates: Point Fermin Historic District NRHP nomination form (PDF)

+ Historic Resources Group, LLC, prepared for CP&A/Arquitectonica: “Point Fermin Lighthouse Historic Structures Report” (August 15, 2003) (PDF)

+ Howell, Huell: “California’s Gold: Point Fermin Lighthouse Lens” (Chapman University)

+ “L.A. urged to obtain Pt. Fermin lighthouse” (Long Beach Independent, February 16, 1972 – via newspapers.com)

+ Littlejohn, Donna: “Four groups apply to operate historic Point Fermin Lighthouse in San Pedro” (Daily Breeze, originally January 10, 2013; updated September 6, 2017)

+ “Los Angeles Harbor Communities” (portoflosangeles.org)

+ “Old Lighthouse to Be Wrecked” (Oakland Tribune, November 15, 1911 – via Newspapers.com)

+ Olesen, William L., Point Fermin Lighthouse Committee: Point Fermin Lighthouse NRHP nomination form

+ Page & Turnbull, prepared for the US General Services Administration: “Point Fermin Historic Resource Analysis” (July 1, 2014) (PDF)

+ “Park Board Will Tend Lighthouse” (Los Angeles Times, December 25, 1926 – via ProQuest)

+ “Point Fermin Lighthouse History (LAParks.org)

+ “Point Fermin Lighthouse” (SanPedro.com)

+ Rasmussen, Cecilia: “Point Fermin Lighthouse Kept Ships From Danger” (Los Angeles Times, March 10, 2002)

+ Tabor, Steve: “Shining the Light on Peninsula History: Pt. Fermin Lighthouse Celebrates 150 Years of Standing Watch” (Palos Verdes Pulse, April 27, 2024)