a view for all seasons ~ cattle point
For almost a year, all through the seasons, I have captured images across the San Juan Channel of this unusually picturesque lighthouse on Cattle Point.
Cattle Point is located on Cape San Juan on the southeastern tip of San Juan Island, and overlooks the Strait of Juan De Fuca. In the 1850's it was part of American Camp, the U.S. Army’s encampment, during the “Pig War.”
The Lummi Indian name for the point was Who-shung-ing. Does anyone know what this means?
The first light on Cattle Point was a simple brass lens lantern on a post, installed in 1888. This lens required daily maintenance, and the lantern’s reservoir needed to be filled with kerosene once a week.
The lens lantern was replaced in 1935 with a 34-foot octagonal concrete tower, and fog-signal building. It sits on the bluff at a height of 94 feet asl, and the new optic was a non-rotating 375-mm drum lens inside the lantern, using an electric lightbulb to produce a 1,500-candlepower light, visible for seven miles. The new foghorn, activated by an electric air compressor, was mounted outside the fog signal building.
In the late 1950s the lighthouse was automated, and the white tower had its lantern removed and replaced with a small 250-mm drum lens, displayed from a short mast on top of the capped tower. The exposed optic, flashing white every four seconds, uses photoelectric cells to turn the light on at night and off in the morning. The electric foghorn is mounted on a cement pad in front of the lighthouse and is activated by an automatic sensor that detects moisture in the air; sounding one two-second blast once every 15 seconds. Today, both the light and foghorn are powered by solar-cell batteries
CASUDI Lopez Island 4 December
