The state of Alaska is full of a very large variety of light stations that people from not only in the surrounding areas enjoy, but people from locations from miles away. While it seems that many people do not know much about the state of Alaska, they many times have heard of or at least seen(whether in person, on a movie, or in a picture) one of the many lighthouses that sit on the soil of AK. For those that may find this fact shocking, let us remind you that Alaska is literally the largest state in the USA; when it comes to the amount of land within it’s barriers. Since being bought from Russia in the late 1860s, there have been a variety of people who’ve lived there, and with the growth of the population and established businesses… lighthouses in Alaska needed to be constructed. Although many of these lighthouses that were constructed in AK were done so between 1900 and 1950, before the state became the 49th state of the USA, they are all still considered to be part of the amazing historical background of the United States as a whole.

Another large factor why typically most of the AK lighthouses are loved and supported by enthusiasts is the fact that the ocean waters surrounding the state are known as and refer to as some of the darkest and hardest to see than most other places in the USA. For this reason, over there years there have been countless accidents and shipwrecks due to a lack of lighting and the rough waters in these areas. With that being said, so many travelers, merchants, and locals appreciate these light stations for the light and safety they provide to water vessels looking to dock and/or pass by. In very popular and busy areas there are not only lighthouses, but lamps that help guide boats and ships to relative safety and other areas where there is no light that can be seen or depended on for miles and miles.

Many people wonder why the coastal line of Alaska after so many years had nothing to help guide ships safely along the shores, and then all of a sudden lighthouses started popping up in the early 1900s. The reason is due to the fact that during the end of the 1800s there was a gold rush which brought people from all over, via land and sea, to the state of AK and many of the water vessels ended tragically because of the lack of light. While Alaska could definitely use more lighthouses, the ones that are there are in well chosen places to help do the most good for passing boats and ships.

On July 20, 1741, Captain Vitus Bering named Cape St. Elias, which peaks at a height of 1,665 feet, for the saint whose day it was according to the Russian Orthodox Church calendar. The cape is actually the southwestern end of Kayak Island, which retains the name given it in 1826 by Lieutenant Sarichef of the Russian Navy for the island’s resemblance to an Eskimo skin canoe. The defining feature of the island is Pinnacle Rock that stands a half-mile off the western end of the cape like a giant exclamation point. Due to hidden rocks and reefs, the waters around the cape were regarded as one of the most dangerous points along the entire Alaskan coast.

The first attempt at establishing a light to mark Cape St. Elias was in 1912, when the lighthouse tender Armeria left Seattle, bound for Alaska where it was scheduled to deploy fourteen acetylene light buoys. Each of these lights was equipped with storage tanks that could keep a beacon burning day and night for at least six months. While anchored off Cape Hinchinbrook in preparation for delivering supplies to the lighthouse established there in 1910, the Armeria was driven onto an uncharted rock by heavy swells. With a hole in the hull and water entering the engine room, the captain had no choice but to beach his craft.

In October of 1913, Congress appropriated $115,000 for the construction of a permanent lighthouse on Cape St. Elias. Much money was being allocated towards improving transportation in Alaska around this time, as the following year Congress agreed to fund the construction of the Alaskan Railroad from Seward to Fairbanks at an expected cost of $35 million. The Cape St. Elias Lighthouse would certainly help vessels sailing to and from the southern terminus of the planned railroad. Everyone, however, was not pleased with the plans for a lighthouse at Cape St. Elias as some believed a lightship would better mark dangerous Southeast Rock, situated 2.5 miles off the cape. A compromise was struck wherein the lighthouse would be built and a lighted buoy would be anchored at Southeast Rock.

THE LIGHT

The lantern room and watchroom installed at Cape St. Elias were fabricated in Kenton, Ohio and displayed at the U.S. Lighthouse Service exhibit at San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition in 1915 before being dismantled and shipped north in 1916. A third-order Fresnel lens consisting of two flash panels was installed in the lantern room and rested upon a mercury float. A weight, suspended inside a shaft that extended from the watchroom to the bottom of the tower, provided the force to revolve the lens three times per minute, producing the light’s signature of two white flashes every twenty seconds. Finally lit on September 16, 1916, the light was of 300,000 candlepower and had a range of 15 ¼ nautical miles. A thirteen-ton buoy with an acetylene blinker, whistle, and submarine bell, had been anchored at Southeast Rock on May 12, 1916.

Cape St. Elias’ fog signal equipment, consisting of duplicate sirens blown with compressed air generated by two eighteen-horesepower engines, had also been on display at the exposition in San Francisco. The outlet for the sound, originally a double blast every minute, was a pair of Y-shaped, double-mouthed copper trumpets. The unique shape of the trumpets was used to direct the sound around either side of Pinnacle Rock.

When completed, Cape St. Elias was considered one of the most important stations on the Alaskan coast as it was a landfall light for vessels bound to Prince William Sound or Cook Inlet. A radio beacon was installed at the station in 1927 to further aid navigation.

THE BUILDINGS

A party of six men, supervised by engineer Harry Fuller, landed at Kayak Island on May 13, 1915 to set up camp and conduct a topographic survey of the site in preparation for the imminent construction of the lighthouse. Superintendent Ralph Tinkham arrived at the island on June 1 from Ketchikan with lumber, skilled labor, provisions, and a cook. Tinkham noted that a good cook was essential for camp morale and was pleased to have found Tom Pierce a “good natured and irrepressible Negro who was the life of the camp.” Pierce “had been in practically every gold camp in Alaska since 1898,” working magic with his portable cook stove. F.J. Dohrer would serve as the project foreman.

Tinkham spent five weeks on the cape finishing his designs for the station’s structures and selecting their locations. The lighthouse was built on a terrace, forty-two feet above the water, and consisted of a two-story, twelve-foot-square tower attached to the southwest corner of the one-story, 25’ x 36’ fog signal building. Most of the construction party left the cape on October 7, having completed the reinforced concrete work required for the lighthouse, a storage building, and a retaining wall for the keepers’ dwelling. Two men were left behind to tend a small light and serve as camp caretakers.

Tom Pierce returned in May of 1916 with the construction crew to serve as cook for the second season at Cape St. Elias. However, he was already in ill health and succumbed to a “paralytic stroke” later that month. When healthy enough to travel, Pierce was taken to a hospital in Ketchikan. After a three-week stay, he seemed like his old self, but three days later, on June 30th, he was found dead in his cabin from a self-inflected revolver shot.

Supplying the construction site was troublesome, so the island’s resources were used when possible. Over 190,000 bricks were made on site from sand and gravel procured from the beach. These bricks were used during the second season to construct a boathouse, hoist house, and the keepers’ dwelling. Besides having storage space for three dories, the boathouse sheltered a six-horsepower engine for pulling a car up the tramways that extended to both the east and west beaches. The hoist house was located just east of the dwelling and contained a nine-horsepower engine for pulling a cart up the tramway from the boathouse to the storage house, located just north of the lighthouse.

The two-story keepers’ dwelling rested atop a basement where a heating plant was located along with storage space for coal and other provisions. A kitchen, pantry, dining room, office, and a spare room for visitors were found on the first floor, while four bedrooms and a bathroom were situated on the second floor. Five tanks for storing water were located in the attic.

TESTIMONIALS

William McClosky Jr. recalls a trip to Cape St. Elias aboard the USCGC Sweetbrier in 1962 to investigate “repeated dead-of-night calls from a seaman on watch, who kept breaking into sobs.” McClosky relates that they “found a boatswain’s mate in charge, remembered by a former shipmate as a sturdy fellow, who had developed a disturbing giggle and whose eyes, framed in a sallow face, wandered to far horizons. He had made himself emperor of the station. Advisories to his three subjects were posted everywhere in their cramped quarters: ‘Wipe your damn boots – THIS MEANS YOU’ and ‘No loud talk or damn laughing anytime – THIS MEANS YOU’.” The removal of the deranged coastguardsman from the station must have been a relief to his crew. The isolation of the cape definitely had an affect on people as just a year before this incident, one of the crew had rowed out to sea in a dinghy to relieve his claustrophobia and never returned.

MOTHER NATURE

At 5:36 p.m. on Good Friday, March 27, 1964, the largest earthquake ever to occur in the United States struck Prince William Sound. The keepers at Cape St. Elias felt the quake for five full minutes, but it did little damage to the station, even though it caused an uplift of between six to eight feet. Frank Reid was photographing the nearby sea lion colony when his leg was broken by a quake-triggered rock fall on Pinnacle Rock. When Reid didn’t return to the station, his three comrades went to search for him. While carrying the injured Reid back to the station, the crew was caught in a tsunami that flooded the gravel bar leading to Pinnacle Rock with chest-deep water. The men survived the first wave, but just seconds later a ten-foot surge swept them all into the sea. Frank Reid drowned, but the other men survived.

The Cordova Times edition of October 31, 1968 carried a notice that the Seventeenth Coast Guard District planned to automate five Alaskan light stations, including Cape Hinchinbrook and Cape St. Elias. Technological improvements in automatic aids made possible the automation, which would result in an annual savings of $15,000 per station. The automation, scheduled to begin in July of 1970, was estimated to take approximately five years, but the process finished ahead of schedule at Cape St. Elias and Cape Hinchinbrook as both stations lost their personnel in 1974.

Kevin Anderson recorded his feelings on the automation of Cape St. Elias in the station’s logbook. “Saint Elias light is now history. It was downgraded to a minor aid. It seems the best things in life weren’t meant to last. This has been the best job I reckon I will ever have the pleasure of doing. I just hope these lighthouses are never forgotten.” The Cape Saint Elias Lightkeepers Association, organized in 1997 to restore and preserve the buildings on the cape, is working to fulfill Anderson’s wish.

PBS Legendary Lighthouses II: This episode takes viewers to some of the most remarkable, beautiful and rugged places in America’s "Last Frontier." Strewn with rocks (some still uncharted), mined with icebergs, often blanketed with fog and torn by ferocious storms, the seas around Alaska are some of the most treacherous on the planet. Yet, along Alaska’s 33,000 miles of coastline, only a handful of lighthouses were built to mark the way for ocean-going vessels, pleasure boaters and a fleet of commercial fishermen. Most lighthouses in Alaska were built at the turn of the last century, when gold was discovered, and none are accessible by road. All are reachable only by boat, plane or helicopter.