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Oregon’s first coastal, privately-built lighthouse is now for sale, and the asking price is a cool two million; $2,250,000 to be exact.
Reportedly, this is the first time the 2,300 square-foot structure has ever been offered on the market. The property has been immaculately maintained, and even though it was privately built, it is rich in history. It was constructed by former Coast Guard lighthouse keeper James A. Gibbs (1922-2010) as a replica of the 1898 Fiddle Reef Lighthouse on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, that was destroyed in 1978. The lighting apparatus in the lantern was salvaged from the Solander Island Lighthouse off the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
A veteran of World War II, Jim Gibbs served as a lighthouse keeper in the 1940s at the remote and dangerous Tillamook Rock Lighthouse, off the rugged coast of Oregon. He went on to become editor of Marine Digest until he retired in 1972.
As well as a large number of maritime and shipwreck books, Gibbs also authored: Lighthouses of the Pacific; Tillamook Light, A True Account; Sentinels of Solitude: West Coast Lighthouses; Twilight on the Lighthouses and coauthored Oregon’s Seacoast Lighthouses. He was considered one of the best authorities on West Coast shipwrecks and lighthouses. He did all of his research and wrote all of his books in the days before there was any internet or high-speed email communication, a feat that many of us today may feel hard to comprehend.
Gibbs named the lighthouse from the hymn He Hideth My Soul in the Cleft of the Rock, based on the Bible verse from Exodus 33:22.
While the light was authorized as an official private aid to navigation and listed on the Coast Guard’s Pacific Coast lights list during Gibbs’ lifetime, it was deactivated following his death and has since been lit by the family only on special memorial occasions.
This story appeared in the
Sep/Oct 2023 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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