Cape Mendocino Light

Cape Mendocino Light

Cape Mendocino Light (USCG)
Location	Shelter Cove, California
Coordinates	40°01′20″N 124°04′10″W
Year first lit	1868
Automated	1951
Deactivated	1970s (Old)
Foundation	Concrete
Construction	Cast Iron
Tower shape	white 16-sided Pyramidal
Original lens	First order Fresnel lens (removed)
Characteristic	white flash every 15 s.
ARLHS number	USA-129H
USCG number	6-0515

Cape Mendocino Lighthouse is a lighthouse in California, United States, off Shelter Cove near Point Delgada, California. The 43-foot (13 m) tower had the highest focal plane at 422 feet (129 m) in the U.S.

This exceeded the 420 feet (130 m) Makapuu Point Light (which has a hyperradiant Fresnel lens, the only one of its kind and the largest lens in the United States).

History

The light at Cape Mendocino was activated on December 1, 1868. The United States Coast Guard took control of the Cape Mendocino Lighthouse in 1939 when the United States Lighthouse Service merged with it. The light was automated by the Coast Guard in 1951 and then abandoned in the 1970s. The old 1868 lighthouse was relocated in 1998 to Shelter Cove, and the original first order Fresnel lens was transferred to a replica in Ferndale, California where it sits in a replica tower at the entrance of the Humboldt County Fairgrounds. In 1998 a group of volunteers dismantled the lighthouse and reassembled it in Mal Coombs Park in Shelter Cove, California.

External links

• Rowlett, Russ. "Lighthouses of the United States: Northern California". The Lighthouse Directory. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/lighthouse/ca.htm. 
• "Historic Light Station Information and Photography: California". United States Coast Guard Historian's Office. http://www.uscg.mil/history/weblighthouses/LHCA.asp.