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Not According to Plan
So read the headline with this series of Associated Press photos published on November 12, 1972. The caption read as follows: “An effort to lower an old lighthouse onto a flatbed truck comes to grief at Will Rogers State Beach Park in Los Angeles as the beacon cupola atop the tower snaps off and crashes to the ground. Damage turned out to be minor and the 60-year-old lighthouse was moved to the new Malibu campus of Pepperdine University where it will be put back into service when the cupola is repaired.”
Cape Elizabeth
Maine’s Cape Elizabeth Lighthouse from an early 1980s color image. Look closely and you can see the 2nd order Fresnel lens that was once in the lantern and is now on display at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, Maine.
Served at West Quoddy
John Look served as an assistant Coast Guard keeper at Maine’s West Quoddy Head Lighthouse from 1965 to 1966. He served there with Robert Bran and George Staples. (John and Sheila Look collection)
Famous Lighthouse Scene
This famous dance scene from the 1954 holiday classic movie White Christmas shows Danny Kaye and Vera-Ellen dancing in front of a replica of the Cape Florida Lighthouse. This wonderful movie features the songs of Irving Berlin and a new version of “White Christmas” that was introduced by Bing Crosby in the 1942 classic movie Holiday Inn. Both should be on your list of movies to watch this Christmas season.
Ringing the Bell at Angel Island
On July 2, 1906, when the automatic bell striker failed on the fog bell at California’s Angel Island Light Station in San Francisco Bay, lighthouse keeper Juliet Nichols rang the bell for over 20 straight hours using a simple carpenter’s nail hammer. She had to repeat the procedure again on July 4th of that same year. Fortunately, the automatic striker was repaired after that. She served as the keeper here from 1902 to 1914. In 1963, after automation, the Coast Guard burned all the structures, but they saved the fog bell, which is still on display there as part of Angel Island State Park.
This story appeared in the
Nov/Dec 2022 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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