Befriending the beacons The Coast Guard is looking to unload the lighthouses it runs.

Byline: Winston Ross The Register-Guard

CHARLESTON - An aging, barbed-wire-topped fence stops visitors to the Cape Arago Lighthouse from getting anywhere near the 44-foot tower by car. The bridge that once carried vehicles to the islet just off Gregory Point is no longer safe for vehicle traffic.

The only way to reach Chief's Island and its neglected lighthouse is by helicopter.

The access problems, the remote location and - here's the clincher - the government's decision that the lighthouse is no longer a "necessary aid to navigation" for mariners gave the U.S. Coast Guard the justification it needed to shroud this rugged cape in darkness. Earlier this year, the Coast Guard quietly turned off the light at Cape Arago - after 70 years of illumination.

The historic structure is officially obsolete.

By those standards, so are the coast's dozen other lighthouses. Most fishermen now use global positioning satellites to guide them along Oregon's rocky shoreline.

That's why the Coast Guard is looking to unload the lighthouses it owns or operates in Oregon and around the country. Their century-old Fresnel lenses are expensive to maintain and the buildings that house the Oregon beacons face some of the fiercest weather the West Coast has to offer.

It's a trend that could either help or threaten the beloved structures, which draw hundreds of thousands of tourists to the Oregon Coast each year. If the Coast Guard finds willing caretakers - with enough money and energy to maintain the lighthouses - they will survive. If not, more Oregon lighthouses could meet Arago's fate.

"Nobody wants to see it shut off," said Coast Guard Lt. j.g. Kate Jackson, the agency's lighthouse coordinator. "But as a steward of taxpayer dollars, we don't have the budget to maintain the building the way we would like to."

In 2000, as Congress saw the Coast Guard's efforts to maintain its lighthouses dwindle, lawmakers passed the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act. The idea was to preserve the lighthouses - by giving them away.

In the first two years of the program, 28 historic light stations were declared excess property by the federal government and transferred from the Coast Guard to other federal agencies, state and local governments and nonprofit organizations.

In some cases, that's been a good thing. In the 60 years the Coast Guard has been charged with maintaining lighthouses, the agency has done an adequate job of keeping the lights in good shape, say lightkeepers and history buffs. But the buildings that house those lights have often been neglected.

Finding new owners for them can be a boon. The Yaquina Head Lighthouse, now owned by the Bureau of Land Management, is gleaming from a $1 million restoration effort, paid for with a congressional appropriation.

The Fresnel lens that magnifies its 1000-watt bulb also needs repair. But the lens is still owned by the Coast Guard, which isn't allowed to accept money granted to the Bureau of Land Management to fix it.

Fresnel lenses don't come cheap. The repair job for one smashed by vandals at Cape Blanco in 1992 cost $80,000, which is why Coast Guard officials have recently begun replacing the lenses with a "modern optic" that shines just as far but costs $1,200.

The Coast Guard is surveying fishermen who use Yaquina Head to determine whether the lighthouse is still necessary for navigation. If it's not, the agency can transfer ownership of the lens to the bureau.

"For us, it means we'll be able to actively raise money to restore and preserve the lens, which we weren't able to do before," said Jane Maines, executive director of the Friends of Yaquina Lighthouses.

Community support has proved vital in past efforts to keep Oregon lighthouses alive. After an automated beacon was installed on a concrete blockhouse near the Cape Meares lighthouse in 1963, the Coast Guard proposed removing the old tower, according to the national nonprofit Lighthouse Friends. But local citizens opposed the move, and the building was restored.

But what about the lighthouses that don't have friends?

Cape Arago lighthouse was turned off on New Year's Day of this year, after Coast Guard officials said no fishermen spoke up to save it. "It's sad," Maines said. "There are a lot of people who miss it."

The Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians are petitioning federal lawmakers to transfer the lighthouse and Chief's Island to the tribes, arguing that a nearby burial site has historic and cultural significance. But there are no plans to turn the light back on, said tribal administrator Francis Somday.

Even one of the country's most visited lighthouses has suffered from neglect. The Heceta Head Lighthouse, which drew a half-million visitors last year, had its light replaced by a foot-tall, "puny little beacon" a few years back, said lightkeeper Steven Bursey, after the base that the Fresnel lens sat on began to rust and Coast Guard engineers worried it could fall and break.

"Sometimes you couldn't even see it from the house," Bursey said, referring to the former lightkeeper's house. "I talked to a Coast Guard engineer the day they pulled the curtain closed, and he told me if I wanted to see the light go back on, I'd have to exert political pressure from the top down."

At that point, the Coast Guard had already declared Heceta unnecessary for navigation, after dropping a survey for fishermen off at the Port of Siuslaw. Bursey said the survey didn't reach many mariners because the port is hardly used by Oregon's fleet.

"I went around to bars and tried to get fishermen to go in and sign it," Bursey said. "They were all for the lighthouse: They could work on the deck and have a visual point of reference without going into the cockpit and checking their machines. But, based on the number of responses they got, the Coast Guard determined it was no longer needed as an aid to navigation. Then it got really depressing around here."

Eventually, U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) pressured the Coast Guard into spending $55,000 to repair the Fresnel lens. He then sponsored a bill that transferred ownership of the lighthouse, located north of Florence, to the Oregon Department of Parks and Recreation, which already owned the land on which it sits.

Jackson said the Coast Guard considers a range of factors when it decides whether to declare a lighthouse unnecessary for navigation, including what ports are nearby, how often they're used and whether conditions of nearby jetties or other natural geology has changed over time.

But it's mostly about maritime safety, Jackson said. Skippers' comments to the Coast Guard - or the lack of them - make up the bulk of the evidence.

"Ultimately the Coast Guard is there to protect the mariner," Jackson said. "We're trying to determine whether the mariner could survive without that aid." Maines' organization helped relight the Yaquina Head lighthouse in 1997 after the cost of maintaining the Fresnel lens had grown too prohibitive for the government.

"Even with the satellite navigation and all of the modern equipment fishermen have, I still occasionally get a letter or postcard from local fishermen who tell me they really depend on those lighthouses to show them the way home," Maines said.

Florence fisherman Al Pazar said lighthouses are absolutely necessary, especially when high-tech equipment on boats fails. "I look at them every day," he said. "They're a good reference point, a landmark. It'd be a shame to shut them down."

The Coast Guard's push to rid itself of the buildings or replace Fresnel lenses is worrisome to lighthouse enthusiasts.

"The Ninth Act of Congress created a lighthouse establishment so there would be a standard of care. I hate to see that tradition come to an end," Bursey said. "With a variety of different agencies getting ahold of these lighthouses, the care is not going to be as consistent. But the silver lining is the general public will be able to access more lighthouses."

There's certainly no shortage of interest in Oregon lighthouses, Maines said. "Lighthouses are symbolic of the struggle that we as a country went through to develop new territories. Until the lighthouses were built up and down the West Coast, there wasn't any safe means of transportation, other than over land."

Christine Curran is the heritage programs manager for the State Historic Preservation Office. She says the government and the public need to get creative about how to protect Oregon lighthouses.

"We need to accept that this is happening and try to raise their profile," Curran said. "These lighthouses are very important to Oregonians in general."

David Eshbaugh, executive director of the Oregon State Parks Trust, is trying to raise $3.5 million to restore the seven publicly accessible lighthouses on the coast. So far the agency has raised about $200,000.

Past restoration efforts of Oregon lighthouses were funded with congressional appropriations, Eshbaugh said. Trying to raise the money from private citizens and businesses is a challenge.

"The Coast Guard can't be expecting the community to keep them up," Eshbaugh said. "It's a formula that I think will fail, and these lighthouses will continue to deteriorate and crumble."