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Throughout the U.S. Lighthouse Service era, it wasn’t all that uncommon to find multiple family members and even multi-generational family dynasties serving together within the same lighthouse district, and sometimes at the same lighthouse. Keepers and brothers, Henry and William Hill, provide a good example of this family service in a combined 33 years spent at a minimum of six different light stations in the Pacific Northwest District 17, including Tillamook Rock Lighthouse where their paths crossed for a year together.
The Hill family had immigrated from England in the 1860s, sometime after Henry’s birth in 1867, and settled in Youngstown, Ohio where William was born two years later. Henry Hill, Sr. worked as an iron moulder, and in 1883, the family came westward to the Portland, Oregon area where Henry Sr continued his profession and later established the Oregon Foundry Company in 1893. He was considered a pioneer in the trade and was the first foundryman to use a process called “chill roll” for which he was known in the industry.
The foundry was a family affair and all five of the Hill sons: George, Henry Jr, William, John and David were in business with their father until he passed away in 1906. Henry Jr married Laura E. Gray in 1900, but the marriage was short-lived and they divorced without having had any children. In 1910, William and Henry were living together in Portland, and while William still worked at the foundry as an iron moulder, Henry had changed over to work with vacuum cleaners. Henry was 43 at the time and perhaps felt that 25 years at the foundry was enough.
By 1918, William, age 49, also decided to leave foundry work for good and signed up with the U.S. Lighthouse Service to become a first assistant at one of the more desolate stations in the 17th District at Destruction Island, 3.5 miles off the coast of the Washington Olympic Peninsula. What instigated William’s change of career path will probably never be known, but it was apparently a good fit for him as he was promoted to head keeper in 1923. He stayed in that post for another six years before finally transferring to an even tougher assignment as head keeper at Tillamook Rock Lighthouse in 1929.
Meanwhile, around the same time, or shortly after William joined up, Henry, too, decided to see how he liked lighthouse work, and by 1919, at age 52, he had begun serving at Cape Meares Lighthouse in Oregon as second assistant. Cape Meares was a very easy post compared with William’s isolated life out on Destruction Island. It would certainly be interesting to read any correspondence between them during the first years of their service, if any were to be found.
After only a couple of years there, Henry moved on to Yaquina Head Lighthouse in Oregon, another relatively cushy onshore assignment, where he remained for the next eight years. Yaquina Head was a family station and had many amenities, being so close to Newport which was a busy commercial center at the time.
Henry was promoted to first assistant after his first four years there, and then, in 1931, was promoted again to head keeper when he took on a new post as a district-wide relief keeper. During this assignment, Henry travelled around to multiple lighthouses in Oregon and Washington for brief periods of time to fill in for keepers on leave or between transfers. His name was found in the logbook of the now defunct Smith Island Lighthouse in Washington in 1931 to 1932. It is unknown how many other places he was sent, but Henry was headquartered in Portland at the district office, so he could have travelled to any number of lights throughout this time.
On April 29, 1932 Henry was assigned to Tillamook Rock Lighthouse in Oregon where he joined up with his brother William for the next full year as his first assistant. In a photo caption for an article written by Department of Commerce Lighthouse Commissioner George R. Putnam, Henry was used as an example of the staunchness of lighthouse keepers employed in the Service.
Putnam wrote that Henry, while going on leave from Tillamook Rock, was lowered together with a mailbag by the derrick and missed the cargo boat, resulting in being submerged some 20 feet below the surface of the ocean. Henry later nonchalantly remarked that he “seemed a long time coming up.”
The following year, the keeper absences ledger for Tilly then recorded at 1 p.m. on Apr 26, 1933, that Henry Hill, age 66, was officially granted “Retirement from the Service.” In a 1933 newspaper interview shortly thereafter, Henry spoke about his time on the Rock.
“Tillamook Rock is the most thrilling station on the Pacific coast, principally because of the terrific storms and seas that batter it. You wouldn’t think that the seas would reach the top since it is [134] feet from the water line. The waves do reach the top and they sweep over it – over the stone house in which I and the other keepers lived.
“For days, while the seas were the highest, we were forced to remain inside the lighthouse. If a man tried to go out, he would be washed off in an instant…. It is like a prison. There is no place to go and nothing to see. Once stationed there, a keeper does not leave until his year or more is up. The steamers passed on the lane farther to the west and we could see the people on the coast – they were very far away as far as companionship is concerned.
“Soon the keepers go stale – the round of duty, eating, sleeping and cleaning is deadening. Five men are confined on the rock. Four men work while one man is off duty. During fog and storm when the horn is blowing, sounding for five seconds and then remaining silent for 40 seconds, one detests the place.”
The article went on to report that two things made life endurable on the station for Henry and the other keepers – work and radios. The work was endless but “the radio is the greatest aid to lighthouse keepers in lonely stations in recent years. Through it, they keep in contact with the outside world; through it, they can forget their loneliness and boredom; through it, they can get the only entertainment in their lives.”
Henry also spoke of the great storms that continually assaulted the Rock in the winter. “I have seen the water crashing over the buildings and battering the rock. Sometimes, we wondered how it could stand up and whether the glass in the light would be battered in. We dreaded to have the glass knocked out, for we knew we would be almost drowned by the water. Fortunately, the glass held and we never got wet.”
Unfortunately, that last statement was only for the short time Henry was serving there. Both before and after were multiple reports confirming that the glass panes in the lantern were indeed shattered by rocks and debris during storms, and the keepers were most definitely nearly drowned inside.
On December 23, 1931 a fierce storm took out nine of the lantern panes and put out the light according to an account given by William Hill that was later published in the Lighthouse Service Bulletin. Head keeper Hill reported that “The sea kept coming over [the tower] all day and I could not put in any new glass on account of getting someone hurt.” On Christmas Day, William repaired the bottom and center panes, but the storm was still ongoing and by the 27th, more plate glass was broken. He could not get the plates to stay in place until the following day.
The most horrific storm was logged three years later in October of 1934 where 16 lantern panes were broken and the keepers were literally swimming up to their chins as water cascaded down the tower stairs with each wave surge. The fog signal was inoperative due to being choked with dead fish and seaweed while damaged pipelines put the heating plant and water system out of commission, and one later newspaper reported that the keepers were without food for four days because the salt water had spoiled their stores.
William Hill was still the head keeper during this “perfect storm,” also known as the 1934 extratropical cyclone, that wreaked great destruction along the Northwest coastline and did heavy damage at Tillamook Rock Lighthouse, including impairing the first order Fresnel lens chariot so that the main light was out for a few days.
There are many interesting telegrams preserved in the archives of the Oregon Historical Society that tell the complete story of what the keepers went through and what they had to do to get the lighthouse operational again. For their great courage and resourcefulness during the storm, the four-man crew all received glowing commendations from both the Department of Commerce and the 17th District Superintendent of Lighthouses, Ralph R. Tinkham.
William Hill’s letter read in part: “You are commended for the prompt and effective action taken to meet the emergency conditions at your station resulting from the great damage to equipment and appurtenances caused by the exceptionally severe storm beginning October 21, which repeatedly enveloped the entire station with tremendous seas . . .
“The exceptional severity of the storm and sea is emphasized by the complete destruction and disappearance of the derrick, essential to the transference of personnel and supplies, which so far as known never has occurred before in storms which otherwise have caused more or less damage to the station.”
“The extraordinary service of yourself and assistants in this instance has been reported to the Commissioner of Lighthouses for the information of the Bureau and the Department and this commendation will be noted on the service record of each one concerned.”
The ironic thing was that two years later, Keeper William Hill would bring his 18-year lighthouse service career to an end due to an unfortunate accident at Tilly that didn’t have anything to do with a storm.
A November 25, 1936 article by the Oregon Daily Journal reported that “The lighthouse tender Manzanita reached port here early Monday from an emergency trip to Tillamook Rock to bring William Hill, 67, a lightkeeper, who had suffered fracture of several ribs in a fall at the rocky station. Hill was taken to a local hospital where attendants reported he is recovering.”
It is currently unknown where William fell from, but breaking several ribs would probably have discouraged even the hardiest of men at that age from returning to a hardship post such as Tillamook Rock. William quietly joined his brother Henry in retirement officially on January 1, 1937.
Henry had settled two hours south of Tilly in the town of Taft on the Pacific Coast Highway where he could still enjoy the ocean views. He had come out of retirement at least once to act as a docent for a week at the October 1935 Pacific International Livestock Exhibition in Portland, Oregon where the Tillamook Rock Lighthouse first order lens was on display in a Department of Commerce U.S. Lighthouse Service 17th District exhibit.
The lens had been removed eight months after the 1934 cyclone, having been deemed less efficient due to prism damage received during the storm. What better person to work at the exhibit to explain its history and function to fair-goers than a former Tillamook Rock Lighthouse keeper?
When William retired, he moved in with Henry and the two were together until April 15, 1945, when Henry Hill passed away at age 78. William lived another 12 years until his passing on February 24, 1957 at age 87.
William’s obituary noted that he had never married and that he was “the last survivor of a well-known Eastside family.” William and Henry rest together along with their mother Sarah, father Henry Sr, and two other brothers, George and John, at the Lone Fir Pioneer Cemetery in Portland, Oregon. With no descendants to keep their memory alive, it is fitting that they can now be remembered and honored for their service within the pages of Lighthouse Digest.
This story appeared in the
Mar/Apr 2021 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.
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