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Unfortunately, we are adding yet another lighthouse to the Lighthouse Digest Doomsday List of Endangered Lighthouses. The new addition is the historic, but neglected and for all practical purposes the abandoned Tree Point Lighthouse located on the Revillagigedo Channel in southeast Alaska by the Canadian border. The story in this issue by Jill Marie McMurray about her grandparent’s life at the lighthouse in the 1930s caused us to make a new assessment of the light station.
The history of Tree Point Lighthouse goes back to 1903, when construction of the first tower started, to when lighthouse families first occupied the site and cared for that first tower that was lighted on April 30, 1904. Interestingly, it is the only lighthouse station to be built on the mainland of Alaska. All the other Alaskan lighthouses are on islands. In 1933 construction started on the current concrete tower that stands there today and it was completed in 1935.
Life was rugged for the lighthouse families that lived there, but for all practical purposes they handled it well and enjoyed the life that this rugged outpost had to offer. As well as the story in this issue about life at Tree Point Lighthouse, you can also refer to the story “A Year at Alaska’s Tree Point Lighthouse” that appeared in the September-October 2012 edition of Lighthouse Digest, which can also be found in our on-line archives at www.LighthhouseDigest.com.
However, in more modern times, from the late 1950s up until automation in the late 1960s, many of the Coast Guard personnel who were stationed there did not handle it as well as their predecessors. One time, armed Coast Guardsmen from the Coast Guard base in Ketchikan had to be dispatched to the lighthouse to handle a dispute that caused most of the crew and their wives to be transferred. From then on, until automation, Tree Point Lighthouse was a stag station.
Being listed on the National Register of Historic Places does not offer any protection to historic places such as Tree Point Lighthouse. When it was nominated for the National Register of Historic Places the nomination papers stated that it was “the most intact [lighthouse] outpost in the southern section of Southeast Alaska. It includes the concrete light and fog-signal building built in 1935, one standing keeper residence, the two original oil houses, the later-period boathouse, and features of the water supply system. In addition, the tramway run is relatively intact.”
The one remaining keeper’s house listed in that report is now in shambles and probably won’t stand much longer. The rest of the station is also in shambles and the tower is in deplorable condition. So, being listed on the National Register of Historic Places is not worth the paper it is written on and could be considered a waste of bureaucratic time and paperwork.
Finding a suitable steward for the Tree Point Lighthouse, should it ever be excessed, would be extremely and highly unlikely. Even if the government were to attempt to auction the lighthouse off, it would take someone with an immense amount of money to restore it and make anything habitable at this remote location. More than likely, because of its proximity to the Tongass National Forest, the lighthouse might be taken over by them; however, that would not necessarily mean that the site would be restored. More than likely the Tree Point Lighthouse Station will stand as a stately ruin, much like the ancient ruins of Greece with the only difference being that, because of its remote location, very few people will ever visit Tree Point Lighthouse.
This story appeared in the
Sep/Oct 2014 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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