Before there were lighthouses on the Peninsula, ships bound for Portland and Astoria navigated their way through the high waves and shifting sandbars, focusing on fluttering white flags and notched trees along the shoreline by day and flickering signal fires by night. These methods were crude at best and, despite heroic efforts, the sea offshore of the Long Beach Peninsula became known as ‘The Graveyard of the Pacific’.

In 1788, British fur trader John Meares named the area Cape Disappointment after his inability to locate the river’s mouth.

The Peninsula’s first lighthouse, Cape Disappointment, had a bumpy beginning. As early as 1848, a government survey had recommended a lighthouse due to the great number of shipwrecks. Lighthouse construction materials were underway in 1853, stashed in the hull of the ship Oriole when it sank two miles off shore. While a few items were salvaged, the bulk of the shipment was lost.

We got the tip to head to Waikiki Beach in Cape Disappointment State Park to get a nice view of the lighthouse from the visitor’s center in Ocean Park.

Both Cape Disappointment Lighthouse and North Head Lighthouse were taken under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Coast Guard in 1939. In the early 1990s the Cape Disappointment light underwent a major renovation, complete with a new paint job with black and white stripes with a dark green top.

Cape Disappointment is the oldest functioning lighthouse on the west coast. I will share my photos from the North Head Lighthouse soon. You will need a Discovery Pass to get close to each of these lighthouses.

ht: Funbeach.com