A Battle
With the Elements
Can you feel the sea wind? The lighthouse can, too!
For a lighthouse, standing out in the sea spray and storm winds is part of the job description. For more than a century of working life, Heceta Head Lighthouse has taken a constant barrage from the elements.
Please come inside the oil house to learn more about how Oregon State Parks is working to preserve and restore this important resource. If the oil house is closed today, visit our website (a href="www.oregonstateparks.org">www.oregonstateparks.org).
In an age when navigation beacons can be made smaller, cheaper, and easier to maintain, why save the old lighstations? Imagine this headland without the picturesque buildings and its story. Historic lightstations are legacies of our past and gifts to the future.
Photo captions:
- Heceta Head Lightstation with incoming storm.
- In an effort to improve the Lighthouse, the exterior was stuccoed in the 1890s. More recently we have learned that the walls need to breathe to prevent mold from growing on the inside. The windows were also once covered and filled in.
- Heceta Head Lightstation, circa 1913-1915. Though beachgoers could once visit the "Eye," it has since eroded.
- Metal expands at the coast due to water penetration and this expansion of rusty metals causes it to fail.
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