East Brother Island Light Station, East Brother Island, San Rafael Bay, Richmond, California
Built in 1874.
EAST BROTHER ISLAND LIGHT
Location: Off Point San Pablo, San Francisco Bay
Date Built: 1874
Type of Structure: Square buff colored wood tower attached to keeper’s house a two story Victorian placed on a blasted away 1-acre rock. It also had an assistant keeper’s house, equipment building, cistern, and water tank. The water cistern was also blasted to a depth of 30 feet and is capable of holding 50,000 gallons of rain water.
Height: 48 feet with height of focal plane 61 feet
Lens: fourth order Fresnel lens
Automated: 1969, now FA 251
Foghorn: Wood fog signal building originally steam whistles
Status: Operational, active aid to navigation, bed and breakfast inn
Historical Information:
- U.S. Lighthouse Service ran the lighthouse operation until 1939, when the U.S. Coast Guard took over the Lighthouse Service.
- Large families occupied the lighthouse, having to light the original lens wick filled with whale oil; on many foggy nights, they’d have to fire up the steam boilers to drive the foghorns, hauling coal up the long ramp from the boat.
- Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
Keepers:
- Samuel M. Farran (1874-1880)
- Charles F. Winsor (1880-1887)
- P.J. Quinlan (1887-1894)
- John O. Stenmark (1894-1914)
- John P. Kofod (1914-1921), Herbert Luff (1921)
- J. Dunn (1921-1922)
- Williard Miller (1922-1942)
- J.S. McGrath (1942-1944)
- E.P. Perry (1944-?)
- Mickey Edward Thurman (Coast Guard, c. 1944-1947)
First Assistants:
- John Cawley (1874-1881)
- Joseph M. Page (1881-1883)
- Albert Tippett (1883-1886
- Charles A. Paulson (1886-1888)
- Charles McCarthy (1889-1890)
- Martin Haave (1890-1893)
- James Anderson (1893-1901)
- Oscar Sellman (1901)
- Charles A. Paulson (1901-1902)
- John W. Astrom (1902-?)
- Andrew Szarnecker (1908-?)
- C.E. Clark (1909-1918)
- E.C. Easton (1918)
- D. O. Kinyon (1918-?)
- W. Monette (1919-?)
- A.H. Joost (1921)
- T.F. Brown (1921-?)
- F.L. Pike (1922-1926)
- Roy L. Murphy (1926-1928)
- Frederick S. Cobb (1928-1930)
- J.H. Sylvia (1930)
- W.J. Atkins (1931-1936)
- Earl Snodgrass (1936-1943)
- Frank Dacosta (1943-?);
Second Assistants:
- F. Moran (1874-?)
- James Rankin (c. 1878)
- William McCarthy (1878-1880)
Researched and written by Catherine (Kitty) Price, a Chesapeake Chapter of the U.S. Light House Society volunteer.