Lighthouse Friends
The present, diminutive Fort Point Lighthouse is actually the third to stand at the point. Construction of the original lighthouse and its twin on Alcatraz Island, just inside the bay, began in 1852. The Fort Point Lighthouse was completed in 1853, shortly after the Alcatraz Light, but both sat empty and idle awaiting the arrival of their lighting apparatus from France. Just three months after it was completed and before its Fresnel lens ever arrived, the Fort Point Light was razed. The Army had decided that the strategic point was needed for the construction of a fort.
Construction on the fort began in 1854, when workers blasted the 90-foot cliff down to a mere fifteen feet, so the forts bottom row of cannons could skip cannonballs across the waters surface to penetrate ships at their waterline. The three-story fort, constructed of red-brick and granite, took seven years to build and was the only such fort on the West Coast.
When the third-order Fresnel lens intended for the Fort Point Lighthouse finally arrived, it was diverted to Point Pios, where it remains in use today. The second lighthouse at Fort Point, a squat wooden tower with four sides that sloped up to a square watch room, was built on the narrow ledge between the fort and the water. In March of 1855, the light from a fourth-order Fresnel lens atop the thirty-six-foot tower was exhibited for the first time.
