Lime Kiln Lighthouse was established in 1919 on Lime Kiln Point, a 36-acre (15 ha) day-use park overlooking Deadman Bay to the south and Haro Strait to the west on San Juan Island‘s west coast, about 12 miles (19 km) northeast of Victoria, British Columbia and 6.4 miles (10 km) west-southwest of Friday Harbor, Washington. Europeans first visited the San Juan Islands in 1794, when Spanish explorer Francisco de Eliza sailed there and named the archipelago Isla y Archipiélago de San Juan to honour his patron, Juan Vicente de Güemes Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo, 2nd Count of Revillagigedo. Lime Kiln Point takes its name from historic lime kilns used for calcinating locally mined limestone. The resulting quicklime was used as mortar in building construction. The limestone is a minor constituent of the mostly metavolcanic rocks forming the point, including pillow basalt, breccia, tuff, and chert.
The San Juan Islands have an archaeological record of human habitation dating back at least 14,000 years. These prehistoric people became the Lummi, Saanich, and Songhees tribes, which together with the Sooke, Semiahmoo, and Samish tribes are now often called collectively the Northern Straits Coast Salish people. Coast Salish families undertook seasonal activities on San Juan Island. In spring, women harvested and prepared camas bulbs, an important cultivated food, and maintained crops of other meadow plants. Men hunted deer, repaired fishing nets and made hooks for catching halibut, rockfish, and lingcod. In early summer, families moved to fish camps for the salmon runs along the island’s south-west coast. Traditional family sites were used for reef-net fishing, and large catches were wind-dried or smoked for winter. By late autumn, families returned to winter villages on the islands or mainland. The 18th and 19th centuries brought traders and explorers from Russia, Spain, England and later America.
In the 1860s, acetylene lights were placed on Lime Kiln Point. Five years later these were replaced with an octagonal concrete tower rising 38 feet (12 m) from the fog-signal building, flanked by two lightkeepers’ houses. The lighthouse was built on solid rock about 20 feet (6 m) above high water. The tower’s helical-bar lantern room, fabricated by Wisconsin Iron and Wire Works of Milwaukee, has a diameter just over 7 feet (2.1 m) and is encircled by a concrete deck and gallery. A fourth-order Fresnel lens was added in 1919. The US Coast Guard automated the light in 1962, and in 1998 the drum lens was replaced with a modern optic flashing white every ten seconds. At 55 feet (17 m) above the rocky shoreline, the beacon is visible for15 nautical miles (27 km), guiding ships through Haro Strait. Read more here and here. Explore more Lime Kiln Light and San Juan Island here: