| CENTRAL COAST LIGHTHOUSE KEEPERS | WINTER 2001 |
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To view previous Lighthouse Quarterly editions, click here. LIGHT SWITCH ...by Carol O'Neil |
 Lowering the Prism |
After the big light was turned on, August 1, 1889, it worked dependably until replaced by an automated aero-beacon in November 1972. Sheets of plywood were installed in the lantern room windows and the lens was stopped for good when the light from the aero-beacon began turning on the roof of the fog signal room. As early as 1969 inquiries were being made about the fate of the Pt. Sur Fresnel Lens. Pacific Grove and then the City of Monterey asked for the lens. Admirals in the Coast Guard variously replied that "we will consider your request" to "Fresnel Lenses belong in lighthouses" to "there is a strong possibility that the lighthouse will become part of a state park and the lens thus preserved for enjoyment by future generation in its original setting."
A wonderful thought, but realities being what they were, vandals were a constant concern on the unoccupied rock. This was the "hippie-era" in Big Sur. Even today, a bullet hole in the south side of the tower's cupola is a reminder of less happy days. Could plywood really deter someone bent on wreaking havoc?
In 1978, the Coast Guard was quite receptive to a request from the Monterey History and Art Association for the lens to be loaned and relocated to their Allen Knight Maritime Museum. (The museum was named for Allen Knight, a former mayor of Carmel who had amassed a considerable collection of maritime artifacts. His heirs donated his collection to the museum upon his death in 1964.) Once permission to "borrow" the Fresnel Lens from the Coast Guard was obtained, a way was needed to actually move the lens out of the tower.
Col. Richard "Dick" McFarland, USA (Ret.) was the man to do it. McFarland was Deputy Director of the Allen Knight Museum and not only managed to get the job done, but luckily for us, documented it each step of the way. First he sent letters to everyone that might be of help (army engineers from Ft. Ord, a Fresnel Lens expert that worked for the Coast Guard in Boston, a Maritime Museum in Virginia) for suggestions on how best to remove the lens. It was determined early in the process that the lens could not be brought down the lighthouse tower stairs. At first they thought to lift the various panels of prisms out through the open storm panes, wrap them in quilting, and lower them with ropes down a chute to the ground. Fortunately, the Maritime Museum in Newport News, VA had recently moved a First Order Lens and provided some much-needed guidance.
So armed with a plan and a pickup truck full of tools, a crew of volunteers and Coast Guardsmen started out from the Coast Guard Station in Monterey. They got as far as the "Y" in the road, almost to the top of Pt. Sur, but still several hundred yards from the lighthouse. The road to the lighthouse with its many small bridges was not safe for vehicles. The crew unloaded their pickup truck, put the tools in a wheelbarrow and carried everything they needed out to the lighthouse.
First they had to remove some of the plywood from the tower just to get enough light inside the lantern room to work. Then the lens and its rotating mechanism were tested. All was found to be still in working order after being boarded up for five years. Now, to actually take apart the lens itself.
The team started with the upper frames, the curved sections at the top of the giant lens. Eight sections of glass prisms in individual frames were held to the greater lens with 14 screws. To quote McFarland's report: "In most instances a light tap with a hammer on a screwdriver was enough to release the screw. No rust was evident and each screw was unscrewed with no trouble or damage to the threads. This is particularly significant since these screws had been installed in 1889, some 89 years ago."
Leaving one screw in place to hold the frame with all of its prisms still in place, a 1/4" rope looped over a steel beam near the roof of the tower, was used to gently lift the nearly 200 pound frame out of its seat. The frame was then carefully swung clear to the outside of the lens, lowered through the narrow stairway opening next to the lens, and placed in a quilt before leaning it against the inside tower wall. The lens was rotated into position so that each frame in turn was directly over the stairway. The frames had been individually numbered at the factory and stamped into the frame. Though some of the prisms had old chipped edges, they were all "firmly seated within the individual bronze frames."
The next day, using a double strand of rope secured to the steel balcony rail, the frames were lowered to the ground. The team continued down and around the lens removing next the bull's eye frames. These were hand carried to the base of the lighthouse, two men to carry each of the eight large bull's eyes and one man for the each of the eight small ones. The bottom frames with its glass prisms were removed and lowered over the side like the upper frames, and all pieces stored in a room at the base of the tower. Two large steel rings supporting the lens structure were held in place by ropes as the last of the glasswork frames were removed. Then they too were lowered over the side. Fifty individual pieces of the Fresnel Lens were removed and stored, plus many small screw and braces.
Eventually, the parts were put into wheelbarrows, taken down the access road to a waiting pickup truck, and finally loaded into a moving-truck parked at the base of the rock. The Fresnel Lens, without its turning mechanism, was reassembled two months later, October 1978, and displayed in the Allen Knight Museum.
Another 14 years would pass before Pt. Sur's Fresnel Lens and its turning mechanism were reunited and the light again turned on in October 1992. The Allen Knight Maritime Museum and its collection were incorporated into the Monterey Maritime Museum located on Custom House Plaza near Fishermen's Wharf. Thanks to a generous $500,000 grant from the Thomas Dodd Sr. and Anita M. Dodd Fund of the Community Foundation for Monterey County the prism was disassembled, moved and installed in place several blocks away. And I'll bet they didn't use a single wheelbarrow.
Today you can see Pt. Sur's First Order Fresnel Lens lit, rotating and fully operational at the Monterey Maritime Museum.
To view previous Lighthouse Quarterly editions, click here.