Welcome to Lighthouses of
Puget Sound #6: Point Robinson cache.
Featured in Berkeley Breathed's delightful
children's Christmas story, "The Red Ranger Came Calling," Point
Robinson Lighthouse sits on a sandy beach with verdant bluffs as a
backdrop.
Located on the northeast corner of Maury
Island in Puget Sound, the lighthouse marks the halfway point
between Seattle and Tacoma. Before 1925, Maury Island was only
accessible by boat or bridge at high tide. Now, however, the island
is easily reached from the larger Vashon Island, via a paved road
on a narrow strip of land.
Often shrouded in fog, Point Robinson began
as a fog signal station on July 1, 1885. The original boiler and
12-inch steam whistle came from Oregon's Point Adams lighthouse. A
light was added to the station in 1887. The lens lantern, shining
fixed red, was attached to a 25-foot post. In 1894, the post was
replaced by a wooden tower which shown the light at 31
feet.
In its picturesque setting and closeness to
civilization, Point Robinson was a preferred station among keepers
and their families. Originally, it was tended by a single
keeper.
In 1897, one keeper noted that the whistle
blew for 528 hours straight. After shoveling 35 tons of coal to
keep it going, the keeper requested an assistant. Six years later,
in 1903, a second keeper was assigned to the station.
The first keeper's dwelling with
characteristic green shutters was built in 1885, when the fog
station went into operation. A second dwelling was not added until
1907, four years after the assistant arrived. The present oil house
dates from 1913.
The current lighthouse was built in 1915,
with a 38-foot tower and fifth-order Fresnel lens. With these
specifications, the light could be seen 12 miles. The tower is a
twin of Alki Point Lighthouse, with diagonal astragals in the
lantern room.
Though the light was automated in 1978, it
still shines two white flashes every 12 seconds from the original
fifth-order Fresnel lens. More specifically, the flashing pattern
is on for three seconds, off for one second, on for another three
seconds, and off for five seconds.
In the early 1990s, local residents caught
wind of a plan to lease land on Point Robinson to a
seafood-processing plant. The citizens joined together to form the
Keepers of Point Robinson and, coupled with the Vashon Parks
Department, they were able to negotiate a fifteen-year lease on the
property with the Coast Guard. Starting in July of 2003, one of the
two keeper's dwellings was made available for weekly rentals, and
the second dwelling has since been made available as
well.
The lighthouse's Fresnel lens remained
active in the lantern room until 2008 when, after more than ninety
years of service, the Coast Guard replaced it with a replaceable
plastic beacon, mounted outside the lantern room. Joe Wubbold, a
retired Coast Guard Captain and volunteer keeper at the lighthouse,
helped persuade the Coast Guard to keep the original Fresnel lens
in place.
The
Cache
This is one of
six caches hidden to complete the
Lighthouses of Puget Sound series.You can find
one or all of them.
Most of the way to
the cache is on logging roads or dirt paths. The last 20-100 feet
are off trail. There are some moderate elevation changes, up to 400
feet. The forest floor can be mushy and soft. There is no serious
bush whacking needed. Expect poor GPS reception under the tree
cover, the caches are not cleverly hidden but are camo painted and
not visible from the path.
The way to the
cache does not require heavy bushwhacking. You might need to walk
through some knee high low brush. If you are going to do heavy
bushwhacking, perhaps going a bit farther down the trail will
reveal an easy way in.
A paper map of
the trails can be found here.