In the fourth post about our Road Scholar trip, Best of the Pacific Northwest – Exploring Three of Washington’s San Juan Islands, I report about our visit to the Lime Kiln Lighthouse on San Juan Island.

Lime Kiln Lighthouse is located on the west side of San Juan Island. Its name comes from the lime kilns built in the 1860s. For approximately sixty years, the area surrounding the kilns was quarried for limestone and harvested for logs to fuel the fires that transformed the limestone into lime. The resulting lime was used in mortar. <1>

The Lime Kiln Light is located on Lime Kiln Point overlooking Dead Man’s Bay on the western side of San Juan Island. The light guides ships through the Haro Straits and is part of Lime Kiln Point State Park. <1>

The Lime Kiln Light was established in 1914 when acetylene lights were placed on Lime Kiln Point, a name derived from the lime kilns built there in the 1860s. It was the last major lighthouse established in Washington. The light was updated five years later with a 38-foot octagonal concrete tower above the fog signal building. Two keeper’s houses and other structures were also built during this time. A fourth-order Fresnel lens was first exhibited from the new tower on June 30, 1919. The Coast Guard automated the Lime Kiln Lighthouse in August 1962, using photoelectric cells to turn the light on at dusk and off during daylight hours. In 1998, the drum lens was replaced with a modern optic, flashing a white light once every 10 seconds. Sitting on the rocky shoreline at 55 feet, the beacon is visible for 15 nautical or 17 land miles. <2>

For more information, please visit Lime Kiln Lighthouse.

Sources:

<1> Lime Kiln Lighthouse,” https://lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=105.

<2> “Lime Kiln Light,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lime_Kiln_Light.