Point Conception Light stands at the west entrance to the Santa Barbara Channel on California’s Gaviota Coast, marking a point long feared by mariners. Explorers Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo and Bartolomé Ferrer struggled to pass it in the 16th century, and later sailors continued to find its waters dangerous. A lighthouse was established here in 1856 with a French-made first-order Fresnel lens and steel tower shipped around Cape Horn, then relocated in 1881 to a lower mesa where fog was less likely to obscure it. Now 133 feet above the Pacific, the station was automated in 1973 and remains a historic but tightly restricted site.

Photo: Wikipedia · Public domain

Photo: Wikipedia · Public domain

Photo: Wikipedia · Public domain

Lompoc, California · USA