Long Beach Light, Long Beach Harbor, California
LONG BEACH LIGHT
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Old Salts scratch their heads in amazement at the sight of Long Beach Harbor Light. It looks about as much like the accepted version of a lighthouse as a square looks like a circle. Labeled the "robot light" when established in 1949, it is completely automated and was the forerunner of the new version of 20th-century lighthouses on the West Coast. The 42-foot high white, rectangular tower with a columnar base, features a 36- inch airway-type beacon and is controlled by the ANRAC system from Los Angeles Lighthouse. The three-story facility, of monolithic design, is built of concrete supported on six cement columns cast into six pockets of a crib. It does about everything automatic but walk. In its commanding position in San Pedro’s middle breakwater, the lighthouse was considered an uncanny mechanical wonder when first established, but in our day of automation, it no longer gets the "ooh’s" and "ahhh’s" it was once accorded. The Latest navigation light of importance in the Long Beach area was erected atop the pilot station at the Port of Long Beach in 1968. Marking the harbor entrance channel, the light is accompanied by one of the Coast Guard’s new radar scanners.