Here at the southern tip of Los Angeles, on a rocky promontory jutting into the Pacific where the fog swirls and the whales spout, Los Angeles' first lighthouse has stood guard for 128 years, marking the western boundary of the harbor.
The Point Fermin Lighthouse stands as a relic of the region's maritime past, a place steeped in true tales of hardy lighthouse-keepers, among them several women, and of the lore of rusted and rotted remnants of sunken ships that lost their way.
Point Fermin was named by English navigator Capt. George Vancouver in honor of Father Fermin Francisco de Lasuen, colleague of Father Junipero Serra in building the California missions. The point has a lighthouse today because of 20 years of incessant lobbying by Yankee pioneer Phineas Banning, whose labors earned him the title "Father of Los Angeles Harbor."
It wasn't until the 1850s, during the Gold Rush, that California needed lighthouses. In the decades before, Spain had barred foreign ships from making landfall. But miners, politicians and prostitutes--not to mention a goodly amount of supplies--began being lost in a number of wrecks of ships bound for gold-crazy San Francisco.
So in 1852, Congress authorized 16 lighthouses for the Pacific Coast, among them one on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, the first to be lighted in 1854; and at Point Loma in San Diego in 1855. Los Angeles' lighthouse would not be ready for nearly 20 more years.
Land Disputes Prompt Lawsuits
Banning began buying up coastal land in anticipation of a deep-water port for landlocked Los Angeles. Some things don't change: While Banning was busy trying to get Congress to pay for the harbor and lighthouse, disputes that would extend to 78 different lawsuits began heating up over who owned the land and what permits were needed. Disgusted, a wealthy landowner and former Los Angeles mayor named Jose Diego Sepulveda wound up selling the land to the city of Los Angeles for $35.
So the federal lighthouse ended up being built on San Pedro land, in 1874. A multiprism lens mounted in brass, the recent invention of Augustin Fresnel, was shipped from France at a cost of about $12,000. The light was fueled first by lard and coal oil, then by kerosene, and finally, more than 50 years later, by electricity.
