The Semiahmoo Lighthouse was an attractive, Victorian-style lighthouse perched on a platform in Semiahmoo Bay between 1905 and 1944. Located near the entrance to Blaine's Drayton Harbor, the lighthouse had a certain mystique that still intrigues today.
In the final years of the 19th century, Blaine and its sister city on the nearby spit, Semiahmoo, became home to a number of fish canneries, most notably Semiahmoo's Alaska Packers Association. This led to surge in local shipping traffic, which led to a need for a signal light in Semiahmoo Bay.
About 1895 the first rudimentary light beacon - a red lantern suspended on a cluster of three piles - was built in the bay near the entrance to Drayton Harbor. It was tended by Semiahmoo postmaster Orison P. Carver. But people knew it wasn't enough, and some of them cajoled Carver to petition the U.S. Lighthouse Board for a lighthouse and fog signal station. He sent his petition in on Sept. 6, 1897, and received a prompt acknowledgment from the board.
Before the board acted further, the Spanish-American War intervened and all harbor appropriations were postponed. The war was over by the end of 1898, but the petition languished. In April 1900, Carver tried again and this time was more successful.
In 1904, the U.S. government acquired title to 10 acres of land on and near Semiahmoo Spit from the state of Washington for $50, and construction of the lighthouse began later that year.
$25,000 FOR CONSTRUCTION
The government contracted with the Dundon Bridge and Construction Company, a San Francisco and Seattle firm, for $14,000 to build the lighthouse, while the remaining $11,000 went for the lighthouse's equipment, including the light and foghorn. The light was a fourth-order fixed Fresnel lens, and the horn was a third-class Daboll trumpet.
The lighthouse was located in Semiahmoo Bay just south of the entrance into Drayton Harbor, a bit below where Semiahmoo Resort is today. It was designed by U.S. Lighthouse Board architect Carl Leick, and its design was identical to the Desdemona Sands Lighthouse (likewise designed by Leick) at the mouth of the Columbia River.
Construction was virtually complete by May 1905, and a pleasingly detailed description of the lighthouse appears in the May 5, 1905, issue of Blaine Journal. "The finished building is an exceedingly pretty little light station and complete in every detail," describes the paper.
It sat on a platform measuring 50 feet by 80 feet; the platform itself was built on 117 piles driven 15 feet into the sand. The building was an octagonal structure measuring 62 feet by 28 feet. Per the Journal, it was painted white with light green trim (U.S. Lighthouse Society records describe the trim as "gray"), with a bronze-color roof and an interior paneled in fir and cedar.
The building included a 27-foot addition on the east end of the platform with a large wood room and a porch on each side, perhaps the living area for the lighthouse keepers. The kitchen and dining room were immediately adjacent to the addition, in the east half of the building itself.
A smaller addition on the west end of the building's first floor housed the engine room, and contained the boiler for the heating plant as well as the engine for the foghorn. The horn was also in this room and stuck out of the wall on the outside of the building, facing out to Semiahmoo Bay. The second floor (though the building is typically described as one-and-a-half stories) had three small rooms and a storeroom.
The light tower was 29 feet above the first floor, about 10 feet in diameter, and had a circular balcony. The station's water was provided by two 3,000-gallon tanks on the lighthouse's east side that were filled by rainwater from the roof.
Carver was appointed assistant keeper of the new lighthouse at a salary of $600 a year (the same as the lighthouse keeper), with orders to report for duty on May 14, 1905.
Here a curiosity appears, because the next month, about the same time the light became operational, Carver resigned his new post. He had tended the fixed light in Semiahmoo Bay for 10 years and had worked hard to make an actual lighthouse at Semiahmoo a reality. So why did he quit almost as soon as he was named? Was he disappointed that he was named assistant keeper instead of lighthouse keeper, or were there other reasons?
The new lighthouse's light became operational on June 5, 1905, and hosted a variety of keepers over the years. One of the more prominent ones was Edward Durgan, Semiahmoo's lighthouse keeper from 1911 to 1919.
Durgan served in at least seven lighthouses in Washington and Oregon over a period of about 25 years, including Patos Island between 1905 and 1911. His daughter, Helene Glidden, immortalized the Patos Island experience in her 1951 book, "The Light On The Island."
Durgan only reluctantly accepted the Semiahmoo assignment, referring to the lighthouse as "that little birdhouse perched up on stilts at Blaine." He served there until March 1919, when he was stricken with a heart attack while on duty. His wife, Estelle, who had been working as assistant keeper (one of only three women serving on the Pacific Coast at the time), replaced him briefly.
Other lighthouse keepers followed, including Semiahmoo's final keeper, George Lonholt.
In 1939, an automatic light and bell was installed, putting Lonholt out of a job. But the bell was a dud; unless weather conditions were nearly perfect, it couldn't be heard even a mile away.
It took only a few years for the U.S. Coast Guard to decide to replace the entire structure, and it was a sad day in the spring of 1944 when the decision to dismantle the lighthouse was announced. It was unceremoniously torn down over a period of about a month, and by mid-June 1944 was history.
Sighed the Journal, "It will be sometime before local residents become accustomed to looking out over the water and not seeing the old familiar lighthouse."
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