A race against time and the sea to save a historic beacon

John Gibbons shivered in the back of the little boat hauling him to his first assignment as a member of the U.S. Coast Guard.

- BY HAILEY BRANSON-POTTS

It was 1953. Gibbons was a babyfaced 18-year-old kid from Ohio who had only recently seen the ocean for the first time. And he had fresh orders to get to work at one of the country's most isolated — and most dangerous — lighthouses.

The St. George Reef Lighthouse, six miles off the coast of California's sparsely populated northwest corner, stands atop a sheer rock surrounded by nothing but the cold, tempestuous Pacific.

“We came out of the fog, and I saw that light — it looked like something out of a horror movie,” said Gibbons, now 91, adding: “I thought, ‘Holy cow, how'd they ever build anything like this out in the middle of the ocean?’ ”

The St. George Reef Lighthouse is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as an architectural masterpiece and an important symbol of California maritime history. Constructed over a decade in the late 1800s, it is the most expensive American lighthouse ever built.

But time and briny air have taken their toll. The lighthouse has been mostly abandoned for 50 years. Its lantern room leaked. Its handrails rusted. Its paint peeled, and its original wooden floors turned spongy. The hook and boom that once hoisted boats out of the water and onto the rock fell apart long ago.

Few people have ever set foot inside. But a small group of volunteers and old salts are on a mission to fully restore the place and draw lighthouse-loving tourists to this struggling corner of California, where industries devoted to logging and fishing cratered long ago.

The challenges are monumental. Climate change is sure to batter this stone sentinel with higher seas and stronger storms.

More immediately, the lighthouse is now accessible only by an expensive helicopter ride, if the winds are merciful and it is not shrouded by fog.