Station Fort Point, California

Station Fort Point, California

Coast Guard Station #310

Remarks:

The station was first established at the west end of Crissy Field in 1889.  The original station house was replaced with a new structure in 1915 during the Panama-Pacific Exposition and the existing boathouse was built in 1920 after the station was moved 700 feet to the west.  The original station house then served as the Keeper’s family quarters.

Regarding the small boats assigned to the station, pulling surfboat No. 4878 (Type SR) was listed as being in storage as of 1937 with pulling surfboats No. 4515 and No. 1345 (both Type S) on active service.  Motor Life Boat No. 3676 (Type T) and Motor Lifeboat No. 4839 (Type TR) were assigned but 4839 was transferred soon after to Station Point Arguello.

CG-36448 was assigned to Station Fort Point on 19 May 1940 and alternated service between it and Station Point Reyes and was still in service as of December, 1964. 

As of 1943 CG-38754 was assigned as were picket boats CG-4369, 4355, and 4325.  Motor Lifeboat CG-5186, Rescue Boat CG-5234 and Motor Dingy CG-5085 were also in the inventory that year.  The station’s boat allowance was increased by two boats in 1947, Motor Lifeboat CG-36473 and “motor S-B surfboat 25636”.

In 1947 the Coast Guard placed the Bolinas Bay Lifeboat Station in a caretaker status and abandoned Point Bonita as a lifeboat station which increased the area that Station Fort Point was forced to cover and consequently was the reason for the addition of two lifeboats that year.

In the early 1970s the Coast Guard established an “Air Cushioned Vehicle Test & Evaluation Team” at Station Fort Point to test the feasibility of air cushioned vehicles for Coast Guard use.  Two ACVs were tested in San Francisco Bay but it was determined that they were not suitable for Coast Guard operations.

The Coast Guard “disestablished” Station Fort Point on 23 March 1990.  BMCS R. D. Dixon was the OIC.  At that time the station was operating two 44-foot MLBs, one self-righting 30-foot surf rescue boat and one 6-meter RHIB.  The crew consisted of 36 enlisted personnel.

The station’s decommissioning pamphlet noted that:

“The present station house was built during the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition.  The three-story frame structure includes a barracks, galley, administrative offices, and is capped by a watchtower which houses the station’s communications.  The station’s boats are located at the end of the pier which supports a one-story boat house.  The hangar located at the east side of the station was used to support Coast Guard testing of air-cushion vehicles in the 1970s.  Immediately adjacent to the station house is the officer in charge quarters.  This two-story, shingled frame house was the original 1880 [sic] station.”

The station’s equipment and personnel were then transferred to the “new” Station Golden Gate at East Fort Baker in Marin County.

Some of the station’s more notable rescues included the station’s crew participating in fighting fires within the city after the 1906 earthquake destroyed much of San Francisco.  Keeper John L. Clark (G) and his crew on 24 November 1914 rescued the survivors of the M/S Hanalei after the vessel wrecked on Bolinas Point in heavy fog.  Keeper Clark was awarded the Gold Life-Saving Medal for his efforts that day.  The station’s crew rescued 12 persons from drowning from the wrecked tug Pinto after it went aground on Potato Patch Shoals on 3 December 1939.

After the Golden Gate Bridge was constructed and entered service in 1937 the station’s crew were frequently called out to respond to people jumping off the bridge.  The 11 December 1964 issue of the station’s newsletter “Fort Point Splasher” (note the gallows humor—the newsletter’s headline banner is an illustration of the Golden Gate Bridge with a jumper in mid-flight and a Coast Guard 41-footer nearby) indicated that the first person to actually survive a fall was a Ms. Cornelia Vanierland.  The article continued:

On 3 September 1941 at 3:40 p.m. the word was passed: “jumper, mid-span, east side, Golden Gate Bridge.  The jumper, a woman, lived through that fall, and remained conscious at all times, despite two broken arms, a verterbrae [sic] in her back, and several bruises on the back of both legs, with possible internal injuries.  The woman, Cornelia Vanierland, not only lived through that fall, but as far as I know is still alive but paralyzed from the waist down, and lives in San Rafael.  I’ve heard tell she never intended to jump.  She was attracted to height.  She was then, and as far as we know still is the only living person to survive that drop from the bridge.  So always remember – when you hear that word passed “jumper – Golden Gate Bridge” – there is a chance they are still alive.

A relatively detailed history written by the public affairs staff of the Twelfth District is presented here verbatim:

The Old Ft Point Coast Guard Facility (Est. 1877 and abandoned in 1990):

The building on the left (formally home to a Coast Guard commandant) is leased to the "State of the World Forum" since early 1994. This building dates back to 1889-1890.

The building in the middle (on the pier) is the oldest tide monitoring facility in the U.S.

The building on the right is occupied by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Association (NOAA) to manage the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. This building dates from around 1915.

U.S. COAST GUARD STATION FORT POINT

The Golden Gate, magnificent in appearance on a sunny day with calm seas, can suddenly become treacherous to shipping,. Fog, eddies, wind, storms, and strong, currents have caused many disasters through the ages. Early in 1853 the wooden, side-wheel steamship Tennessee departed San Francisco bound for Panama. Because of a heavy fog, the captain "was unaware of the outgoing, tide’s strong current that swept Tennessee north past the gate and along the Main shore." Suddenly, the crew spotted breakers and the captain ordered the engines reversed. But rocks blocked the vessel and the ship began to swing broadside toward the shore. The captain managed to beach the ship on a sandy cove thus avoiding a loss of life. Passengers were put safely on shore and the ship gave its name to the cove.

A month later Capt. William T. Sherman. 3d U.S. Infantry, on leave from the U.S. Army and returning to San Francisco aboard SS Lewis, experienced two shipwrecks in one day. On foggy April 9, in calm seas, the ship overran the Golden Gate and hit bottom on Duckworth Reef, Baulinas Bay, about eighteen miles above the entrance to San Francisco Bay. Passengers and crew got safely ashore. Sherman discovered a schooner loaded with lumber and he persuaded its captain to take him to San Francisco. As they approached Fort Point, "the force of the wind, meeting a strong ebb-tide, drove the nose of the schooner under water, she dove like a duck, went over on her side, and began to drift out with the tide. "The vessel refused to sink because of the cargo of lumber, and Sherman, who had been thrown overboard, clambered back up the side. Soon, a small boat approached and took Sherman aboard, depositing him at the foot of Fort Point. The very wet captain walked to the Presidio thinking that two shipwrecks in one day was not a good beginning, to his future career in the banking business.

San Francisco also wrecked at the Golden Gate in 1853. As the clipper passed Point Bonita on the north side of the Golden Gate, she was caught in an eddy. Swirling about, the vessel hit rocks near the point on December 8. The badly damaged clipper anchored in Bonita Cove. Passengers got on shore safely but the vessel filled with water. Plunderers, including soldiers from the Presidio, boarded the clipper. A storm hit the following day, drowning looters and leaving San Francisco a complete wreck.

When the countless ships brought their gold-hungry passengers to San Francisco Bay in the 1850s, the United States under-took the construction of lighthouses on the Pacific coast. Not until the 1870s, however, were life-saving stations established on the coast. Long before then, one of the earliest organizations in the United States to extend aid to shipwrecked people was the Massachusetts Humane Society, which erected small unmanned huts along Massachusetts Bay in 1785. These huts contained a supply of firewood, food, and clothing,. Soon the Society acquired lifeboats and by 1846 it had established eighteen lifeboat stations along the Massachusetts coast, each having a keeper and a volunteer crew. A year later the U.S. Congress established a system of lighthouses and revenue cutters. By 1854 volunteers had organized 137 lifeboat stations along the eastern coasts of the United States and the Great Lakes. The U.S. Treasury Department organized the Revenue-Marine Bureau in

1871 placing lifeboat stations under it and hiring, full-time professional crews. Then, in 1878, the U.S. Congress created the U.S. Life Saving Service as a separate bureau under Treasury.

Even before the establishment of the Life Saving Service, the Secretary of the Treasury had constructed a station at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in 1877. The new Service’s Twelfth District, i.e., the West Coast, prepared plans for two additional stations, near the Presidio’s Fort Point and at Point Reyes north of the Golden Gate. These stations were eventually supplemented by lifesaving stations at Point Bonita in the Mann headlands and at the southern end of Ocean Beach in San Francisco. In January 1888 the Secretary of War W.C. Endicott granted a revocable license to the Secretary of Treasury Charles S. Fairchild for the erection of a station on the lower Presidio. On November 2, J.W. Meryman, the Life Saving Service’s Pacific Coast superintendent of construction, announced that he had received the plans and specifications for a dwelling house for keeper and crew for each of the two stations.

James H. Coster of Baltimore, Maryland, won the construction contract for the Presidio station in February 1889 with a bid of $11,000 and he promised to complete the work by September 1, 1889. An inspector visited the site on October 8 and found the buildings essentially completed but work had not started on the launchway. Finally, on February 14, 1890, the superintendent of construction announced completion of the station. A separate contract, won by L.D. Frichette of San Francisco, called for a fence on three sides of the station - 915 feet of picket fence and 140 feet of barbed wire. In July 1890 the Life Saving Service asked the Army’s permission to erect a lookout tower on Fort Point. Col. William Graham, the Presidio commander, informed the 12th District that it could erect a ten-foot tower and install telephone communication with it. A few years later an army officer noted that the twenty-foot, wood frame tower stood 123 yards in front of gun 3, Battery Lancaster.

The station crew was soon put to the test. Elizabeth, an 866-ton wooden ship on her seventh visit to San Francisco, arrived off the Golden Gate on February 21, 1891. The captain refused a tow through the Gate from a tug despite the bad weather. A strong eddy drove the vessel back toward Point Bonita where she went on the rocks. Water began to fill the ship but the captain’s wife and family were taken off safely. The ship then drifted north, striking again at Tennessee Cove, then going ashore seven miles north of Point Bonita at the Big Slide Ranch. Crews from the United States Life-Saving Stations at Golden Gate and Fort Point responded to the wreck, but their heroic efforts were doomed to failure. The Fort Point surfboat, in the tow of a tug, was swamped. Keeper Charles Henry washed overboard and drowned. Keeper Hollohan of the Golden Gate Park Station then took some of the Fort Point crew, crossed the bay to Sausalito by ferry and unable to secure horses.., directed his men to harness themselves to the drag ropes of the cart, which, with its load weighed nearly a ton and a half, and started for the scene of disaster. The road led them over high hills and through deep ravines...but the faithful surfmen tugged on.... Horses were finally secured at Tennessee Ranch, and the party quickly reached the ocean shore at Tennessee Cove. Upon arrival, the exhausted life-savers found that Elizabeth had pulled free and drifted farther north. Continuing their trek along the rugged Northern Main coast, they finally arrived at the wreck, too late to help. The life-savers had responded to the disaster in the best tradition of their service, only to be thwarted by the weather. Elizabeth had disintegrated, taking the lives of the captain and eighteen of the twenty-six-man crew.

Two years later, City of New York, the Pacific Mail Steamship Company’s modem iron-hulled steamer, headed out through the Golden Gate on October 26, 1893. A heavy fog hid the tower light at Point Bonita and, suddenly, the vessel struck rocks at the point. The Fort Point Life Saving Station heard the signal cannon and immediately dispatched assistance. Because of the rocks, tugs could not approach the stranded ship, and the Fort Point Station’s surfmen took all passengers off and transferred them to rescue craft. Assisted by the Golden Gate Park Station’s crew, they also removed the steamer’s cargo. Five months later, the hulk broke free from the rocks and sank in deep water.

When Maj. William Harts prepared his master plan for the expansion of the Presidio in 1907, he recommended the removal of the life saving station from the lower Presidio to Baker Beach on the Pacific. He said that it was needed more on the ocean shore than on the bay shore because more wrecks occurred there. Moreover, when his plan to increase the size of the lower Presidio by dredging and filling was realized, the life saving station would find itself far inland. Time would show that Major Harts was but the first of many who wished the station moved.

In 1914 the Life Saving Service merged with the Revenue-Cutter Service and the new organization became the United States Coast Guard, still under the Treasury Department. The station at the Presidio became the Fort Point Coast Guard Station and it was numbered 323. From a document called Assistance Reports one obtains a picture of the variety of tasks that came the station’s way:

October 20, 1917. Picked up and towed a becalmed vessel that was drifting to sea.

September 1, 1919. Virginia, a hydroplane fell into the water from a height of 100 feet. Towed plane ashore. Hull and wings a total loss.

February 22, 1921. A man jumped into bay from a moving airplane. Took him aboard and landed him on shore.

March 2, 1922. Boy fell over a high cliff. When found by the station crew he was bleeding profusely and incoming tide was washing over him.

March 17, 1922. Carried sick lighthouse keeper from the Farallone Islands to station and placed him in the care of Marine Hospital attendants.

September 1923. Stood by while the Seal Rocks swimming races were held.

April 19, 1924. Patrolled entrance of San Francisco Bay to prevent smuggling of liquor.

March 19, 1925. Recovered body of a male bather and attempted resuscitation.

April 7, 1925. Disposed of a dead horse that was on the rocks near Cliff House.

September 17, 1925. Two male bathers caught in undertow and drowned.

March 20, 1927. Rescued man who attempted to cross the Golden Gate in an air-inflated suit and was swept out to sea.

December 6, 1929. Stood by while a glider, in tow of plane, crossed Golden Gate. Glider crashed on Crissy Field, killing occupant.

September 28, 1933. Dragged for body of man whose clothing was found with a note to his wife.

In 1914 work began on the construction of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition grounds on the San Francisco waterfront including the lower Presidio. The Fort Point Station became an obstacle to the exposition company’s plans for it wished to construct a planked auto racetrack that would involve the same site. With everyone’s agreement the company bore the cost of moving the station 700 feet west to its present location. Also, it cost the company $19,000 to install a new steel boat launchwav at the new site.

An army officer, writing in 1919, brought notice to the large men’s quarters at the station. He said it measured about fifty-five feet square and contained two stories, adding there were also quarters for the "keeper" and several other small buildings. By 1920, with the development of Crissy Field adjacent to the station, the U.S. Army Air Service began a campaign to have the station moved once again. Aircraft taking off from the field had to take off from east to west because of the prevailing wind, and had to gain sufficient altitude to get over the Fort Point bluff, 160 feet high, or make a right turn over the station buildings. In many instances the aircraft barely cleared the buildings. Estimated cost of moving, the station east to the vicinity of the Presidio wharf came to $73,000. Once again the Coast Guard was willing to move but it did not have the funds. Nor was Congress willing to supply the funding. The station stayed and aircraft continued to make their sometimes breath-catching turns. In 1940 the Army discovered that it had not issued a permit to the Coast Guard station when it moved in 1914. Hasty paper work, which included the station’s metes and bounds, made everything legal on August 17, 1940.

In 1952 the station felt the necessity to expand its facilities. Demands on its services had greatly increased with the closing of the Golden Gate and Point Bonita stations, leaving it the only one operating in the Bay Area. It considered that an area 150 feet wide and extending from Marina Drive to the bay would be sufficient space for new storage and shop facilities. The Army granted the request and a 1957 site plan showed a storage building, to the east of the station building. A description of the station prepared in 1952 listed the buildings and structures: from west to east - 19.4 commander’s garage, 19.3 commander’s residence, 19.9 station building with boat room, 19.1 storage building, 19-15 shop building, and an unnumbered ammunition storage. The marine railroad ran from three boat tracks within the station building and converged into a single track down into the water. A buoy shack with a latrine. 19.8, stood on the end of the pier. The description noted that the three-story station building had a fourth-story lookout. Inside the building the men maintained a small museum that contained nameplates, oars, and life rings from local wrecks.

The Presidio’s Star Presidian printed an article about the station on September 30, 1963, noting that the crew maintained two 40-foot speedboats and two 30-foot motor lifeboats. With the boats they supplied logistical support for the Mile Rock Light Station, Point Blunt Light Station on Angel Island. and the Alcatraz Light Station. An additional, nasty task was recovering suicides who jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge.

In August 1970 the Army gave permission to the Coast Guard to construct a hangar at the station for housing two experimental air cushion vehicles (ACVs or "Hovercraft"). The permit also involved additional pavement for parking, an approach ramp, flood lights, and the conversion of the paint storage building into an electronics shop. By 1972 the metal-clad hangar occupied a site on the east side of the station. A survey report at that time gave a brief description of the coast guard station:

Mission: boating, safety, search and rescue, and aids to navigation; to provide one motor lifeboat and one air cushion vehicle twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week in support of Coast Guard missions.

Staffing: three (usually only one) officers and twenty-five men.

Facilities: two 44-foot motor lifeboats, two air cushion vehicles, and two highway vehicles.

Buildings: boathouse SF19. electrical repair shop SF15, engineer "mtl" shops CGI, crew berth/administration office CG2, commander’s residence CG3, commander’s garage CG4, ACV hangar CG6, and standby generator room CGl0.

The station came under attack briefly in 1973 when a newspaper reporter wrote an article, "Auto Rules on Scenic Beach. "It noted that the Coast Guard maintained its buildings flawlessly but tolerated a broken down motor pool (the enlisted men’s parking lot) and junk on the beach in front of the station. The commander quieted the situation by cleaning up the beach and making the shore more accessible to the public.

In 1974 the Coast Guard proposed removing the remaining portions of the 1914 marine railroad that had deteriorated greatly and had not been used since 1959. Following an inspection, California’s historic preservation officer. William Penn Mott, Jr., agreed that removal would have no adverse effect. The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation agreed.

When the station’s use permit came up for renewal in 1977, the changing times were marked by the Army Corps of Engineers preparing an "Environmental Impact Assessment." It noted that the station consisted of 3.11 acres of land an 1. 8 acres of tide and submerged land. Its mission remained much the same: search and rescue operations, maintenance of short range aids to navigation, and recreational boat safety in and around San Francisco Bay, the bay entrance, and the coastal waters between Bodega Bay and Monterey. The buildings now consisted of main building 8,100 square feet, garage/shop building 1,440 square feet, boatswain’s locker 500 square feet, two-story (Dutch Colonial) house 2, 100 square feet, former ACV hangar 5, 100 square feet, and wooden catwalk 315 feet long with a 400 square foot boathouse. The assessment noted that public access had been provided to the beach via the Golden Gate Promenade.

In 1984 the U.S. Coast Guard, by then within the U.S. Department of Transportation, informed the Army Engineers that it was designing an offshore breakwater and a new pier for the Fort Point station. It hoped to complete the project by the end of June 1987- Because of this sizable investment, it asked the Army if the revocable permit could be extended for longer than the usual five years. But the future began to take over the present. After much negotiation among the Army, Coast Guard. and National Park Service, the decision was reached that U.S. Coast Guard Station 323 would move to East Fort Baker in Main County and construct new facilities there.

Once the announcement of the move became public, a local tug-of-war developed. The Army announced that it wanted the station’s buildings for guest quarters and warehousing. The officer’s residence with its four bedrooms would be ideal for a colonel or a major. The six bedrooms and six bathrooms on the second floor of the station building would make great bachelor officers’ quarters, while the six large rooms, without latrines, on the main floor could be BOQs for "geographical bachelors". The facilities were in excellent shape, if a little remote from the main post. Meanwhile, the National Park Service had concluded that the station should become a part of the national recreation area and the Army could lease it. In the end the station became a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and the station building became a park rangers’ dormitory and later office space for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA).

For almost one hundred years the Fort Point Life Saving Station had protected those who traveled on the seas, rescuing them from dangers, educating in the ways of sailors, and providing aids to navigation. One of several in the beginning, it became the sole station for the Bay Area and the water beyond. Its traditions and its accomplishments live on in its successor across the bay.

Keepers:

• Frank Knacke was appointed keeper on 15 March 1890 and was discharged on 11 August 1890.

• Charles D. Stuart was appointed keeper on 5 August 1890 and transferred to Point Adams Station on an unknown date.

• Charles Henry was appointed keeper on 11 February 1891 and drowned on 21 February 1891.

• Charles Johnson was appointed keeper on 14 May 1891 and resigned on 1 December 1891.

• Joseph Hodgson was appointed keeper on 3 February 1892 and resigned for physical reasons on 26 January 1904.

• John L. Clark (G) was appointed keeper on 8 January 1904 and was still serving in 1915.  He was awarded a Gold Life-Saving Medal for a rescue he undertook on 24 November 1914.

• CWO (L) Beryl W. King was listed as the CO in 1929.

• CWO (L) Harry F. Burnham was listed as CO in 1936.

•  

• BMCS R. D. Dixon was OIC when the station was disestablished in 1990.

Photography:

Sources:

Station Fort Point File, CG Historian’s Office

Fort Point Lifeboat and Life-Saving Station, National Park Service Website
[www.nps.gov/history/maritime/park/ftpltlss.htm]

Dennis L. Noble & Michael S. Raynes.  Register of the Stations and Keepers of the U.S. Life-Saving Service.  Unpublished manuscript, compiled circa 1977, CG Historian’s Office collection.

Ralph Shanks, Wick York & Lisa Woo Shanks.  The U.S. Life-Saving Service: Heroes, Rescues and Architecture of the Early Coast Guard.  Petaluma, CA: Costaño Books, 1996.

Station Golden Gate Website, Unit History [www.uscg.mil/d11/staGoldenGate/history.asp]

U.S. Coast Guard. Fort Point Splasher [Unit Newsletter] (11 December 1964), 2^nd Edition.

U.S. Treasury Department: Coast Guard.  Register of the Commissioned and Warrant Officers and Cadets and Ships and Stations of the United States Coast Guard, July 1, 1941.  Washington, DC: USGPO, 1941.