Point Sur State Historic Park on California’s Big Sur coast centers on a rocky promontory long known to explorers, mapmakers, and mariners, and on the 1889 Point Sur Lighthouse. Recorded by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in 1552 and renamed several times before becoming Point Sur in 1851, the site was notorious for wrecks caused by fog and the absence of a light, including the 1875 loss of the steamer Ventura. The lighthouse then made this hazardous coast safer, though its station remained isolated for decades. The park, established in 1986 and expanded in 2000, also encompasses naval history, including links to the USS Macon and a surviving Cold War sound surveillance facility.