Dofflemyer Point Lighthouse stands seven miles north of the Port of Olympia near the Boston Harbor Marina and provides the southernmost light in Puget Sound. The South Puget Sound waterways use navigational aids maintained by the U.S. Coast Guard, including fog horns, bells, and lights that guide travelers on Budd Inlet, Squaxin Passage, and Dana Passage and warn of shoals, points, and channel limits. On September 27, 1865, Isaac Dofflemyer and his wife Susan Allen Dofflemyer were granted 316 acres through the 1850 Donation Land Claim Act, including the area later renamed Dofflemyer Point. After the Northern Pacific Railroad reached Tacoma in 1873, steamship traffic increased as water became the fastest route from the Tacoma railhead to South Puget Sound, and Dofflemyer Point became a critical turn for ships entering Budd Inlet en route to Olympia. In 1887, the U.S. Lighthouse Board placed a post lantern at the wharf, manually raised and lowered by rope and pulley, standing 20 feet above high water with visibility of six miles and 40 candlepower. In 1934, the U.S. Lighthouse Service replaced it with a 30-foot pyramidal concrete tower with an automated light, a small non-rotating drum lens with a 1,500 candlepower electric bulb, and a manually operated electric fog horn. In the early 1960s, the U.S. Coast Guard added photoelectric cells to switch the light on and off, though a keeper was still needed to maintain the tower and activate the fog signal. Since 1987, the lighthouse has been fully automated and managed by the U.S. Coast Guard, and that year a radio-beacon was installed to help mariners locate their position. Known as one of the first automated lighthouses in Washington State, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the Washington Heritage Register and stands on private property closed to the public.