www.montereycountynow.com APRIL 3-9, 2025 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 21 says Hansen, who has been a docent at Point Sur for 22 years. He goes on to explain that in the late 1800s after the lighthouse was established, only families were encouraged to operate the lamp due to how lonely and difficult the job was known to be. By the 1920s and ’30s, five families lived there, keeping each other company until Highway 1 was completed in 1937, expanding access to Monterey. Hansen keeps a set of tour notes for reference, and under “Family Life,” one line reads: “Nice place to raise children if you can keep them in the yard.” He shares stories during the tour of children falling off the rock—some 50 feet—only to be saved by shrubs below. “A common misconception among visitors is that they think lighthouse keepers were completely alone,” Hansen says. “In reality, each station was its own little community.” But still, that community was isolated. Docents tell stories of how the large rock was located a half mile from “real land,” separated by a sandbar, and that the lighthouse keepers would spend eight hours a week just on cleaning—wiping the lens with linen and vinegar, scrubbing down the hundreds of fragile glass panes. Today, the lighthouse is still far from its original lens, sitting in storage with State Parks, and volunteers are working to get it back. Rounding the corner up the rock, the white lighthouse tower comes into view, standing tall over Point Sur. Beyond it, the Big Sur coastline sparkles on an especially clear, windless day. “Very unusual,” Hansen notes. “The wind can max out at 75 miles per hour.” Also in view are three, newly renovated bridges that stand out against the historic backdrop. Just before the pandemic struck in 2020 nonprofit Central Coast Lighthouse Keepers (CCLK) and State Parks had wrapped up years of renovations to restore a total of five bridges. Established in 1993, the group was founded to preserve the history of Point Sur, the lighthouse and surrounding rock. Working in collaboration with California State Parks to support Point Sur State Historic Park, the group is entirely run by volunteers and has no paid employees. Over the years, they’ve researched the lighthouse’s history, collected and written detailed records and raised millions to restore the site. Point Sur Lighthouse has a peculiar relationship with the land that surrounds it. While the rock and the lighthouse is operated and managed by Point Sur State Historic Park, established in 1986 and a part of the California Department of Parks and Recreation, the area that surrounds it is privately owned. State Parks officials asked that the Weekly not take photos of the historic ranchland surrounding the rock, nor name it in this story, even though El Sur Ranch is labeled with signage on fences along Highway 1, and can be viewed from public places. In order to visit the state park property, visitors must arrive early (it’s first-come, first-served), where tours are offered only three days a week (Wednesdays and weekends). Upon arrival, visitors must wait for a docent to unlock the gate and guide them through El Sur Ranch to their destination. Halfway to the top during a tour, a lesser-known fact emerges. As one docent tells the story of the USS Macon, a 785-foot dirigible that famously crashed and sank off the coast of Big Sur in 1935 during a storm, he stops to explain why the bridges were rebuilt. Of course, the fortification of the bridges is needed for tours so people can walk safely up to the lighthouse and the keepers’ cabins at the top. But the bridges were a major step forward in a decades-long fight to return a beloved and important piece of history to its rightful place: the first order Fresnel lens. The Fresnel lens came out of the early 19th century, invented by a French physicist named Augustin-Jean Fresnel who died in 1827 at age 39. It was a revolutionary invention for its time, able to manipulate and catapult light into space using an array of curved, glass segments. The lenses came in different “orders,” or sizes, depending on how powerful they needed to be, which was contingent upon the size of the lighthouse and its location. The size of the lens would, to an extent, determine the staffing at the lighthouse—the bigger the lens, the more maintenance was required to monitor it. The first order Fresnel lens is the largest most powerful lens of them all, used in lighthouses with the tallest towers and capable of reflecting light miles from shore. “The French were kind of leading society in science back in the 1800s,” says Stiles, the other docent leading the tour group into the lighthouse tower. He points to an area Carol and John O’Neil have led the Central Coast Lighthouse Keepers, overseeing much of the funding and restoration efforts, as well as collecting and preserving historical documents for Point Sur. DANIEL DREIFUSS A photo of Point Sur Lighthouse with the original first order Fresnel lens inside the tower, taken in the 1930s. Note the ladder propped up outside the lantern, used to wash the “storm panes.” CCLK ARCHIVES
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