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East Brother Island Light Station

July 25, 2019
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East Brother Island Light Station, East Brother Island, San Rafael Bay, Richmond, California

Built in 1874.

EAST BROTHER ISLAND LIGHT

Location: Off Point San Pablo, San Francisco Bay
Date Built: 1874
Type of Structure: Square buff colored wood tower attached to keeper’s house a two story Victorian placed on a blasted away 1-acre rock.  It also had an assistant keeper’s house, equipment building, cistern, and water tank.  The water cistern was also blasted to a depth of 30 feet and is capable of holding 50,000 gallons of rain water.
Height: 48 feet with height of focal plane 61 feet
Lens: fourth order Fresnel lens
Automated: 1969, now FA 251
Foghorn: Wood fog signal building originally steam whistles
Status: Operational, active aid to navigation, bed and breakfast inn

Historical Information:

  • U.S. Lighthouse Service ran the lighthouse operation until 1939, when the U.S. Coast Guard took over the Lighthouse Service.
  • Large families occupied the lighthouse, having to light the original lens wick filled with whale oil; on many foggy nights, they’d have to fire up the steam boilers to drive the foghorns, hauling coal up the long ramp from the boat.
  • Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.

Keepers:

  • Samuel M. Farran (1874-1880)
  • Charles F. Winsor (1880-1887)
  • P.J. Quinlan (1887-1894)
  • John O. Stenmark (1894-1914)
  • John P. Kofod (1914-1921), Herbert Luff (1921)
  • J. Dunn (1921-1922)
  • Williard Miller (1922-1942)
  • J.S. McGrath (1942-1944)
  • E.P. Perry (1944-?)
  • Mickey Edward Thurman (Coast Guard, c. 1944-1947)

First Assistants:

  • John Cawley (1874-1881)
  • Joseph M. Page (1881-1883)
  • Albert Tippett (1883-1886
  •  Charles A. Paulson (1886-1888)
  • Charles McCarthy (1889-1890)
  • Martin Haave (1890-1893)
  • James Anderson (1893-1901)
  • Oscar Sellman (1901)
  • Charles A. Paulson (1901-1902)
  • John W. Astrom (1902-?)
  • Andrew Szarnecker (1908-?)
  • C.E. Clark (1909-1918)
  • E.C. Easton (1918)
  • D. O. Kinyon (1918-?)
  • W. Monette (1919-?)
  • A.H. Joost (1921)
  • T.F. Brown (1921-?)
  • F.L. Pike (1922-1926)
  • Roy L. Murphy (1926-1928)
  • Frederick S. Cobb (1928-1930)
  • J.H. Sylvia (1930)
  • W.J. Atkins (1931-1936)
  • Earl Snodgrass (1936-1943)
  • Frank Dacosta (1943-?);

Second Assistants:

  • F. Moran (1874-?)
  • James Rankin (c. 1878)
  • William McCarthy (1878-1880)

Researched and written by Catherine (Kitty) Price, a Chesapeake Chapter of the U.S. Light House Society volunteer.