During the summer of 1903, the United States Lighthouse Service built the first lighthouse and this cottage, and the tender Heather delivered Oscar Brown and his wife Annie, their furniture, an upright grand piano, a cow, and a horse to the beach. For 36 years, Oscar and Annie tended the light and the land, transforming what had been tideland and a lagoon into a beautiful landscape of gardens and an orchard. From 1903 until the early 1920s, Oscar's primary job was lighting the lantern at sundown, extinguishing it at sunrise, and during foggy periods winding a large clock mechanism that kept the fog bell ringing, demanding and exhausting work that was eased in 1922 when electricity reached Browns Point and a switch in the cottage turned on the beacon while an electric mechanism rang the bell. Every three years Oscar painted the lighthouse, cottage, and outbuildings white with the green and black trim of the U.S. Lighthouse Service, while he and Annie grew vegetables, sweet clover, oats, apples, pears, and cherries and kept a horse, goats, and a Jersey cow. Oscar was also an accomplished musician, and when people began moving to the Point he taught music to their young children. He retired in 1939, when the United States Coast Guard assumed all lighthouse responsibilities, and the keepers who followed him were Arthur J. Woods, Cyril Beaulieu, William Covington, Harold Nelms, and Robert Deason. When the light was automated in 1963, Metro Parks Tacoma became caretaker of the buildings and grounds and renamed the site Browns Point Lighthouse Park, and in October 2000, Points NE Historical Society became a partner with Metro Parks, restoring the cottage and outbuildings and providing public access.