California’s rugged coast line offers many opportunities for water craft to stray out of safe waters and into harm’s way.  From the middle of the 19^th century when California became a state, those entrusted with making sure the shipping lanes were safe and well-marked have applied the latest techniques and technologies to the string of lighthouses that dot the coastline from San Diego north to Crescent City up near the Oregon border. 

     These often silent sentinels, with their unique patterns of flashing or rotating lights and mournful fog horns, represent enduring symbols of a time when our coastline was a graveyard for unwary sailors who strayed too close the hundreds of rocks and other navigational hazards that mark the transition areas between water and land. 

     Newspaper accounts and fiction writers glorified and documented the hardships of the hardy souls who staffed these lighthouses 24/7.  These images are presented to show the serenity the occupants may have found in living and working at California’s Lighthouses.  For those of you who visited these monuments to another era, perhaps each series of pictures shows them in a light you may want to remember or might have missed.

Jerry Kalman

jerrykalman@americanfotomoments.com

 These and other photos are available for private collections.