Point Sur Lighthouse

Point Sur is the lighthouse mariners begged for. The 361-foot volcanic rock off the Big Sur coast — 'a point that appears as a small island' on Vizcaíno's 1602 map — guarded water so treacherous that more than a dozen ships wrecked nearby before Congress funded the light in 1887, eleven years after the first petitions and twelve years after the steamer Ventura's loss finally forced the money. It first lit August 1, 1889, and has not been dark since.

Life on the rock was its own isolation file — four keepers and their families on a station reachable only by sea until Highway 1 arrived in 1937, supplies hoisted up the rock on a steam-driven rail hoist, a doctor four hours away by horseback, nearly 400 stairs between home and the mainland. The coast below collected the era's wrecks — including the Navy airship USS Macon, which went down off Point Sur in 1935 in front of the keepers' own eyes.

The reputation is the coast's own conclusion — Point Sur is routinely called California's most haunted lighthouse, the candidates ranging from a keeper who never left to the dead of the wrecks the light failed to stop. It's the state's only complete turn-of-the-century light station open to the public — keepers' quarters, fog signal, and all — reached only by docent tour, the families who lived in isolation still said to be in residence.

Point Sur Lighthouse is the archive's haunted-rock file — the 1889 station on the Big Sur volcanic plug where a dozen wrecks and the Macon crash fed the legend that California's most remote lighthouse is also its most haunted.