|
As I floated in my kayak around wave-battered Point Conception, “the elbow of California,” I thought to myself, “some lighthouses are best experienced from the seat of a kayak.” Being on the water gave me a better perspective of the lighthouse, and of those ships that entered the Santa Barbara Channel from the north, while enduring tumultuous weather both before and after the lighthouse was built in 1856.
As I paddled around Point Conception, within a matter of just a few minutes, I experienced tricky winds swirling out of the east, then the northwest, and quickly out of the southeast. It was just a wispy reminder of how unpredictable the winds can be around one of the most volatile regions along the West Coast.
The 52-foot-tall Point Conception Lighthouse rests on a cracked cement slab and is constructed with stucco and brick. The cylindrical wooden tower is white with a greenish lantern roof. It stands prominently on the flat, barren bluff weathering everything the Pacific Ocean throws at it.
The first order Fresnel lens at Point Conception was lit with oil and kerosene until 1948 when they finally received electricity. It was the last lighthouse on the west coast to be electrified, and the seventh lighthouse operating on the West Coast. After the lighthouse was automated in 1973, the Fresnel Lens was moved to its final home at the Santa Barbara Maritime Museum located in Santa Barbara Harbor. It can still be viewed there today.
Front Row Seat from the Santa Barbara Channel
There’s also no public access to one of the earliest-built lighthouses on the California Coast, so, from my kayak I had a unique vantage point of a lonely-looking lighthouse. Private lands surround the wave-battered bluffs where the lighthouse towers above turbulent, shifting seas. Even less predictable are scheduled lighthouse tours which are as unpredictable as those swirling winds.
However, the ever-present craggy, serpentine ridgeline of the Santa Ynez Mountains, a coastal mountain range that runs east to west is a mainstay of California’s coastal topography. Eventually the range reaches the scenic Gaviota Coast where the Santa Ynez Mountains converge with the Pacific Ocean. It’s also where Point Conception protrudes westward, and it’s the western entrance of the shimmering Santa Barbara Channel.
Chumash Indians, who lived in the region for thousands of years, called weather-beaten Point Conception “Humqaq,” which means, “the raven comes.” To the Chumash the dramatic coastal landscape was also known as “the Western Gate,” the most western region in Chumash territory. It’s a sacred place to this Native American tribe, an ancient marine terrace where it’s believed the souls of the dead use the area to reach the afterlife.
In 1542 Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo sailed up from Mexico into what was then known as Alta California. He was the first European to explore the region. Sailing under the Spanish flag, the maritime explorer named Point Conception “Cabo de Galera,” or “Galley Cape.” Sixty years later, Spanish explorer Sebastian Vizcaino retraced Cabrillo’s voyage, and renamed the prominent marine terrace “Punta de la Limpia Concepcion,” or Point of the Immaculate Conception. The new name was anglicized and has withstood the test of time.
Minding the Tides and the Currents
Point Conception marks the beginning of the Southern California Bight, the curved coastline between the prominent point and San Diego, and the area of the Pacific Ocean defined by that curve. This curvature of the coast at the Point Conception Lighthouse is accompanied by dramatic shifts in weather, currents, and ecosystems, which combine to make the marine communities here some of the most productive in the world. Currents from as faraway as Mexico and Alaska collide at Point Conception, fisheries from north and south teem off the weathered promontory.
An alternative view of the Point Conception Lighthouse is attainable if you mind the tides. On extreme low tides a view of Point Conception can be reached on foot, with a decent look from a desolate beach. It’s a 10-mile roundtrip hike from the Jalama County Park parking lot in northern Santa Barbara County.
It’s known as the De Anza Trail. It’s named after Juan Bautista de Anza Bezerra Nieto, who was a successful Spanish expedition leader in the 1760s and 1770s into Alta California. However, this portion of the coast has no trail at all. It’s just wet, hardpack mud, beach walking at its best on a remote, wind-groomed beach. At the very least, on high tides beach-walkers will get wet and may have to turn around if the surf is big on a fast-moving, incoming high tide. If hikers aren’t careful, they could get stuck against the steep, eroding cliffs.
Whether you’re willing to paddle to the lighthouse or time the tides and hike beneath sheer, eroding bluffs, keep an eye on the healthy, dense kelp forests surrounding Point Conception, where southern sea otters can be seen rafting on the canopy of kelp. This species of otter is known as a “keystone species” that keeps the kelp and sea urchins in balance both north and south of Point Conception.
George Parkinson was the first lightkeeper at the Point Conception Lighthouse. He worked alone at the lighthouse with Santa Barbara being the closest town 65 miles to the east. It turns out, manning the lighthouse wasn’t a long-time gig for Parkinson. He left his post six months after the desolate lighthouse was first lit in 1856.
Still, there aren’t many towns near the Point Conception Lighthouse. Santa Barbara, Lompoc, and Santa Ynez have been the closest cities for decades. In that sense, some things haven’t changed along one of the most rugged stretches of the California Coast.
As those shifting winds continued swirling and wafting around Point Conception, dense fog crept in off the Santa Barbara Channel. I instantly thought of Parkinson manning the lighthouse alone. As I paddled past the lighthouse, I hugged the shoreline as close as I could as visibility worsened. The foghorn blared every 30 seconds but faded into memory while I stroked eastward toward Santa Barbara.
This story appeared in the
Nov/Dec 2024 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
| 