A String of Lights

A String of Lights. . Before lighthouses, mariners sailing along the rugged west coast anchored their ships at night rather than risk disaster sailing in darkness. Beginning in the 1850s, the U.S. Light-House Service constructed a string of lighthouses along the west coast. Similar to illuminated mileposts on a dark highway, the lighthouses marked geographic locations to guide ships safely. Lighthouses opened the ocean "highway” to nighttime commerce and boosted settlement of the Pacific Northwest., Lighthouses of Oregon and Washington, 1897 , The faint circles represent the distance each lighthouse's beam covered. Mariners could usually see the light ahead before they lost sight of the previous beacon. Solid and dashed lines indicate lamp color and flashing patterns. Large coastal lights such as Yaquina Head Lighthouse helped create an ocean "highway," while smaller harbor lights including Yaquina Bay Lighthouse marked the highway exits., Caption (bottom left): A first-order Fresnel lens allows mariners to see the Yaquina Head light 20 miles away. Initially, the lighthouse projected a fixed (nonblinking) white light. In 1939 the U.S. Coast Guard assigned the current flashing pattern, which helps distinguish this lighthouse from others. Photo: Kevin Rudd