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| Montara lighthouse mystery Published/Last Modified on Wednesday, June 11, 2008 1:56 PM PDT The origin of the 30-foot-tall cast-iron Point Montara Lighthouse had eluded the lighthouse’s General Manager Chris Bauman — until recently. “I always believed the cast-iron lighthouse installed in 1928 was fabricated on Yerba Buena Island,” Bauman said. “But then we found out that this particular lighthouse is much older than that and came from Cape Cod!” It’s true. History buffs have illuminated the past of the lighthouse currently perched atop the cliffs at Point Montara. They place the structure’s original installation at Mayo Beach, Cape Cod, Mass., in 1881. The “mystery of the lighthouse,” plagued Bauman for years. “A long time ago I noted a lighthouse in Isle La Motte, Vermont, that is very similar to ours — its twin — and that one was dated from 1880. I thought to myself, why would they have one in New England that looks exactly the same as ours? Now it makes sense.” Thanks to the diligence of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., residents Bob and Sandra Shanklin, Bauman’s curiosities about the lighthouse’s ambiguous inception can be put to rest. The Shanklins, affectionately known as “The Lighthouse People” in the online community dedicated to such things, happened upon a photograph of the lighthouse taken in 1927 on Yerba Buena Island during one of their routine excavations of lighthouse photos from the U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s office archives. “We have photographed every lighthouse in the U.S.,” Sandra Shanklin said. “After we did that, we decided our next goal was to scan and digitize as many archival photos of lighthouses in the U.S. as we could. In April 2007, my daughter Colleen went with us and scanned the photos. “A few months later my husband noticed it,” she said. “We started searching all over the Internet and there was nothing about it.” The Shanklins’ daughter, Colleen MacNeney, researched the lighthouse’s mysterious materialization on the California coast and authored the scoop of this monumental discovery, which appeared in the June issue of the Maine-based Lighthouse Digest. “It’s the big story this year in the lighthouse world — we have uncovered history,” Shanklin said. Details on the transportation of the lighthouse from Cape Cod to California are still sketchy. “The facts kind of got lost in history,” U.S. Coast Guard Chief Historian Robert Browning said. “It’s just one of those things. Knowing the federal government and the Lighthouse Bureau, they were pretty frugal institutions and I’m guessing they saved the lighthouse because they knew they’d find use for it again somewhere.” No government records pertaining to the lighthouse’s transportation have been recovered, leaving those interested to speculate about its emergence on the West Coast. “My opinion is that the lighthouse was put on a ship and transported whole, then restored in California,” Shanklin said. “I’d imagine the lighthouse was dismantled and moved in 1925, then turned up here in California in pieces in 1928,” Bauman said. “They could’ve shipped it by train,” offered Browning. “It’s likely they disassembled it in Massachusetts and reassembled it in San Francisco.” What is known for sure is that the lighthouse was erected in Wellfleet, Mass., in 1881, discontinued in 1922 and sold at auction to a private party in 1923. According to MacNeney’s findings, the lighthouse was razed from its place of origin (Mayo Beach) in 1939. However, there is evidence to the contrary. The photo the Shanklins uncovered, of the lighthouse at Yerba Buena, was taken in 1927, according to the postmark on the back of the photo. “Everyone in California thought the lighthouse was built at Yerba Buena and everyone on Cape Cod thought it was destroyed,” Shanklin explained. Regardless of the inconsistencies and ambiguities, what is certain is that the lighthouse currently residing at Point Montara is the only lighthouse to have shined on both coasts in the span of one century. “It’s pretty exciting for us at the lighthouse,” Bauman said. “You won’t find this style of lighthouse in California anywhere. Now we’ve got a traveling lighthouse to go along with the travelers we get coming through here. It’s been recycled too. Good environmental practices, good for everybody!” |