Pigeon Point developed from an Ohlone-inhabited coast known in the early 1800s by the Spanish name Punta de las Balenas, or Whale Point, into a maritime and coastal working landscape shaped by shipwreck, trade, whaling, and navigation. After the clipper ship Carrier Pigeon wrecked on the rocks in the 1850s, the site became known as Pigeon Point. A boom and cable were rigged in 1860 to load lumber and crops onto ships, and in 1862 Loren Coburn and Jeremiah Clarke purchased 17,000 acres including Pigeon Point. Portuguese shore whalers operated there from the 1850s to 1895, killing whales to render and sell whale oil. In 1868 Congress appropriated $90,000 to establish a lighthouse and help prevent more shipwrecks, and after the U.S. Government purchased the point from Coburn and Clarke in 1870, a wharf and grain chute were built in the early 1870s so that Pigeon Landing could ship goods to San Francisco. The lighthouse was erected in 1872 and first illuminated on November 15, 1872, and in 1875 a gunfight and murder took place at Pigeon Point Landing over access to the wharf. The original fog signal building was replaced in 1899 by the present signal house. During Prohibition from 1920 to 1933, the area saw rum-running. In 1972 the U.S. Coast Guard replaced the original Fresnel lens with an automated Aero Beacon, leased the property to California State Parks in 1980, renovated the lighthouse in 1992-93, and transferred the lighthouse to State Parks in 2005. Whaler's Cove was purchased by POST in 2000 and transferred in 2005 to California State Parks for permanent protection. From the bluffs of Whaler's Cove, views extend from Año Nuevo north to Montara Mountain, while harbor seals, gray whales, blue whales, humpbacks, many bird species, the Pigeon Point Formation, and native plants define the area's natural setting.
