About Us, and Our Rich History
About Us
The St. George Reef Lighthouse Preservation Society is a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation dedicated to saving one of the most remarkable and hard-won lighthouses ever built in America. Perched on a rock eight miles off the coast of Crescent City, California, St. George Reef Lighthouse has weathered over 130 years of Pacific storms, and today it stands as a National Register landmark and a testament to the people who built it, kept it, and now work to preserve it.
Every person involved with the Society is a volunteer. There is no paid staff here, only people who care enough about this lighthouse to give their time, skills, and resources to keep it standing. That work ranges from structural restoration and helicopter-access logistics to fundraising, historical research, and running the tours that let the public see this extraordinary place up close.
Our mission is guided by three commitments:
- To ensure the lighthouse remains in public ownership.
- To secure, restore, preserve, and protect this historical lighthouse and its artifacts.
- To accurately interpret its history and provide public access, physically when possible and digitally always..
Brief History
St. George Reef Lighthouse exists because of tragedy. In 1865, the steamer Brother Jonathan struck the reef long known as “Dragon Rocks” and sank, killing all but 19 of the 244 people aboard. It took over two decades of delayed funding and brutal construction conditions before a light strong enough to withstand that stretch of ocean was finally built, hand-fitted from granite blocks and completed in 1892 at a cost of $752,000, the most expensive lighthouse ever built in the U.S. at the time. Staffing it proved just as dangerous. Isolated, battered by storms, and reachable only by boat, St. George Reef was one of the toughest postings in the lighthouse service, and several keepers lost their lives there over the decades it operated.
By 1975, automation made the lighthouse obsolete and it was decommissioned. It might have been lost to the sea, if not for Guy and Alice Towers, who in 1986 brought together the volunteers who became the St. George Reef Lighthouse Preservation Society. Their work paid off on March 10, 2012, when the light shone again for the first time in nearly 40 years, and it continues today, one restoration project at a time.
