Satisfied smiles faded and hearts sank when Bureau of Land Management (BLM) officials in Oregon learned that their pride and joy, the Yaquina Head Lighthouse they’d taken over from the Coast Guard in 1996, needed lots and lots of Tender Loving Care..
The 93-foot-tall 1873 lighthouse was discovered in 2000 to need about a million dollars worth of repairs. BLM funds became available in 2005 to begin a seven-month-long top-to-bottom exterior restoration.
Key to the project was nationally-acclaimed metalsmith/designer craftsman Alex Klahm, applauded for his work since 1989 at many lighthouses on the East and Gulf Coasts.
Alex recreated at his home factory, 3,200 miles away in St. Petersburg, Florida, and later installed — with two helpers — dozens of cast iron and bronze pieces to replace rusted railings, cornices, posts, and brackets at the top of the lighthouse tower. The BLM presented Alex with a certificate of excellence for the exceptional work.
Submitted by Society Member George Collins, October 19, 2017.
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U.S. Lighthouse Society News is produced by the U.S. Lighthouse Society to support lighthouse preservation, history, education and research. Please join the U.S. Lighthouse Society if you are not already a member. If you have items of interest to the lighthouse community and its supporters, please email them to candace@uslhs.org.
Candace was the US Lighthouse Society historian from 2016 until she passed away in August 2018. For 30 years, her work involved lighthouse history. She worked with the National Park Service and the Council of American Maritime Museums. She was a noted author and was considered the most knowledgable person on lighthouse information at the National Archives. Books by Candace Clifford include: Women who Kept the Lights: a History of Thirty-eight Female Lighthouse Keepers , Mind the Light Katie, and Maine Lighthouses, Documentation of their Past.
Been there twice, but due to the Federal Government could not get inside either time. Once the Sequestor and more recently volunteers having to have a park ranger with them and then putting a hiring freeze on park rangers. I was told I could come back in a month, but being in Florida, I am not in the neighborhood that often.