The need for a lighthouse at Point Hueneme to mark the eastern entrance to the Santa Barbara Channel was recognized as early as 1857, and in March 1873 Congress appropriated funds for a light station and a 60-acre lighthouse reservation there. In 1874, a Victorian Swiss-Elizabethan style wood frame building that combined a two-story residence with a three-story light tower was erected at the site of the present harbor entry. A fog signal was added in 1882, and in 1899 the lighting apparatus was replaced with a revolving fourth-order Fresnel lens made in France in 1897 by Barrier and Barnard. Designed by French physicist Augustin Fresnel with a system of crystal prisms that projected light for miles, this type of lens remained in use in most operating lighthouses. In 1936, shoreline dredging began to create the deepwater Port of Hueneme, forcing the original Victorian structure to be moved across the harbor toward Silver Strand Beach, where it was demolished in less than three years because of damage and neglect. In 1941, the current concrete art moderne building was dedicated using the original 1897 Fresnel lens, and in 1972 the lighthouse was fully automated. On October 1, 1979, the Point Hueneme Light Works was designated Ventura County Historical Landmark No. 57, and the original 1897 Fresnel lens still revolves inside the lighthouse tower. The name Hueneme has deeper roots in the area's earlier history: in 1542, while sailing under the Spanish flag, the Portuguese sailor Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sighted the present-day harbors of San Diego, Santa Barbara, and Monterey, and his fleet is believed to have landed at Mugu Lagoon on October 10, where he named the place El Pueblo de las Canoas in honor of the large ocean canoes made by the local seafaring Chumash. As he sailed past the small Chumash village near this site at Point Hueneme, he referred to it as Quelqueme or Welweme, names likely learned at Mugu Lagoon. The phonetic spelling of Wene’mu was later Anglicized to Wyneme in 1869 and then to Hueneme in 1872, and the name has been translated as “resting place” or possibly “half-way place,” reflecting the Chumash use of the area as a midpoint between Mugu Lagoon and the mouth of the Santa Clara River and perhaps also as a favorable channel crossing point to Anacapa Island and the eastern tip of Santa Cruz Island.
