NEAH BAY – The Cape Flattery Lighthouse on Tatoosh Island will celebrate a quiet 150th anniversary today.
No commemoration has been planned for the lighthouse, a sentry at the northwesternmost point of the Lower 48 that was lit for the first time on Dec. 28, 1857.
Neither the Makah tribe, which owns the land – the island is part of the Makah reservation – nor the Coast Guard, which oversees the lighthouse, plan any ceremonies.
The lighthouse off the coast of Cape Flattery warned passing ships of the rocky coast in the often turbulent waters.
It marks the entrance to the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the passage from the Pacific Ocean to Puget Sound.
Though the beacon still shines, Tatoosh Island is unoccupied and largely unvisited because of the difficulty of landing boats on the rocky shores.
The lighthouse, which is built on 20 acres, once required three workers to staff it.
Now, it is monitored by the Coast Guard’s 13th District, but is not staffed full time.
James G. Swan, a 19th century ethnographer who lived among the Makah for three years, called the lighthouse the “bright star of Tatoosh,” according to records of his writings held by the Clallam County Historical Society.
The lighthouse was funded in 1850 by a $39,000 congressional allocation that paid for both the Cape Flattery and New Dungeness lighthouses.
The New Dungeness Light Station on the spit north of Sequim first was lighted Dec. 14, 1857 -two weeks before the Cape Flattery site.
Cape Flattery’s original light, which burned oil, now is on display at the Museum at the Carnegie, operated by the Clallam County Historical Society in Port Angeles.
“When that light was there, it was one guy’s job just to keep it clean all the time, because of the oil burning,” said Lee Porterfield, a museum docent.
