New Dungeness Light Station stands on Dungeness Spit in the Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge, on the southern shore of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, about 17 miles (27 km) west-northwest of Port Townsend and seven miles (11 km) north of Sequim, Washington. The spit is a sandbar about five miles (8 km) long, one of the longest natural spits in the world and the longest in the United States. Captain George Vancouver named it New Dungeness in 1792 because it resembled Dungeness on England’s southeast coast, where a light has guided mariners since 1615. The spit began forming roughly 5,000 years ago, after glacial ice retreated and sea levels stabilized. It is part of a geomorphic system that includes the outer spit, the doubly recurved Graveyard Spit, Cline Spit, the Dungeness River delta and the lagoons of east and west New Dungeness Bay. Predominant waves from the west drive sediment east and northeast along the outer shore. Much of that sediment erodes from unarmored bluffs to the west.

From the sea, the low, sandy shoal is barely visible, making it a serious hazard to shipping, and mariners nicknamed it Shipwreck Spit. The spit was designated for a lighthouse in 1849, and on December 14th 1857 the light was first exhibited through a fixed third-order Fresnel lens. The original keeper’s dwelling was a one-and-a-half-story building of sandstone blocks shipped from Bellingham, topped by a brick tower about 91 feet (28 m) high with a wooden stairway and five landings. An open-frame fog bell tower stood at the outer end of the spit, where a bell of about 1,200 pounds (544 kg) sounded at ten-second intervals in fog. On September 21st 1868, 18 Tsimshian camped on the spit while returning by canoe to British Columbia after picking hops in the Puyallup Valley. Just before dawn, a party of S’Klallam raiders trapped the camp and killed 17 of its members. The lone survivor, a pregnant woman, reached the lighthouse, where keeper Henry Blake sheltered her. The dead were buried on the long sandbar to the south, which became known as Graveyard Spit.

In 1875 a wooden tramway, about 1,350 feet (412 m) long, linked the boathouse with the keeper’s dwelling and a steam fog signal building, easing the hauling of coal and supplies. In 1927, severe cracks forced the tower to be lowered to its current height of 63 feet (19 m), and a lantern from the decommissioned Admiralty Head Lighthouse was installed. The light was automated in 1976. In March 1994 the U.S. Coast Guard withdrew its last lighthouse keeper. Within months, the New Dungeness chapter of the United States Lighthouse Society secured a license to maintain the station, and volunteers have staffed it around the clock since September 1994 on one-week shifts. The chapter later became the New Dungeness Light Station Association. In 1915, President Woodrow Wilson set the spit aside as a refuge for native birds. Today the refuge, managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, supports about 240 bird species and 29 mammal species. Graveyard Spit and the land beyond the lighthouse are closed year-round to protect wildlife, while the lighthouse remains an active aid to navigation and welcomes visitors on guided tours. Read more here and here. Explore more of New Dungeness Light Station and Dungeness Spit here: