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THE ASTORIAN • SATuRdAy, ApRIl 2, 2022
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Point Adams Lighthouse was officially shut down in January 1899.
FIRST LIGHT
Point Adams Lighthouse once
guided ships entering the Columbia
By JULIA TRIEZENBERG
For The Astorian
M
any lighthouses have been
scattered across the North
Coast, although some are no
longer standing. Point Adams Light-
house, the first to be built on the
Oregon side of the Columbia River,
worked to guide ships entering from
the south for 24 years.
Completed in 1875, the light-
housewas designed by Paul J. Pelz,
who also designed a few sister light-
houses as well as notable buildings
in Washington, D.C., including the
Library of Congress.
The lighthouse’s tower rose up
from a wooden Eastlake style house,
representative of Victorian era archi-
tecture. Over the years that it actively
guided ships, the lighthouse’s homey
atmosphere provided keepers with a
sense of community.
Although the lighthouse shares its
name with a geographical place, it
wasn’t actually built on Point Adams.
The building was about a mile south
of the geographic Point Adams, near
Battery Russell in Fort Stevens. The
lighthouse started with a fourth order
Fresnel lens that had a flashing red
and white light, allegedly visible for
11 miles.
The lighthouse also came equipped
with a fog signal for low visibility
POINT ADAMS
LIGHTHOUSE,
THE FIRST TO BE
BUILT ON THE
OREGON SIDE OF
THE COLUMBIA
RIVER, WORKED
TO GUIDE SHIPS
ENTERING FROM
THE SOUTH FOR
24 YEARS.
conditions. It was the first Oregon
lighthouse station with a steam fog
signal. The hope was that this loco-
motive style signal could be heard
over the noise of nearby breaker
waves.
Unfortunately, this didn’t work
out as well as the U.S. Lighthouse
Service had hoped, and the whis-
tle was discontinued in 1881. One of
the lighthouse keepers’ most frustrat-
ing maintenance issues was the sand
constantly blowing into the building.
Keepers tried planting various types
of grass and fences to slow the sand’s
spread, but to no avail. The build-
ing saw a lot of wear and tear over
the years and was always in need of
repairs.
The lighthouse began to feel
unnecessary after the extension of
the South Jetty in the 1890s, as well
as the first Columbia River lightship
marking the entrance to the river.
With the construction of the jetties,
the geography around Point Adams
changed a lot. While the area used to
be a rounded point directly near the
river’s entrance, Clatsop Spit now
separates Point Adams from the sea
by more than a mile.
Conversations to deaccession
Point Adams from the Lighthouse
Service began in the late 1890s. In
1898, Congress appropriated funds
to discontinue the light and replace it
with a fog signal near Fort Stevens.
The lighthouse was officially shut
down in January 1899. Desdemona
Sands Lighthouse, which used to sit
in the middle of the Columbia, was
constructed to replace Point Adams
just a couple of years later. Then, after
being declared a community fire haz-
ard, the Lighthouse Service burned
the Point Adams Lighthouse building
down in 1912.
Julia Triezenberg is an educa-
tor at the Columbia River Maritime
Museum.
Point Adams Lighthouse was located on the south side of the Columbia near Fort Stevens.