Bonavista Lighthouse is one of the most recognizable and prominent lighthouses in our province.
It was built in 1843 and operated until 1962. It's purpose was to mark the entrances to Bonavista and Trinity bays and to aid mariners headed for Labrador.
It is the fourth-oldest lighthouse in Newfoundland. The two-story wooden building is constructed around a masonry tower surmounted by a lantern. It is now a provincial museum, containing an exhibition about life in a lighthouse during the 1870s.
It would be nice to have a cache at each of the prominent Newfoundland and Labrador lighthouses. There are already caches at Cape Spear and Point Amour and this one marks the historic light of Cape Bonavista.
The first lamps and reflectors came from the Bell Rock Lighthouse in Scotland. This apparatus was later replaced by a catoptric system from the Isle of May in Scotland, first installed in Newfoundland in 1850 by Robert Oke at the Cape Pine lighthouse, later moved to the Harbour Grace Island lighthouse, and finally to Cape Bonavista. Both the historic light mechanisms that ended up at Cape Bonavista, the one from the Bell Rock and the one from Isle of May were installed by Robert Oke, who served as the first Chief Inspector of the Newfoundland Lighthouse Service. In 1962 the lighthouse went dark, replaced by an electric light on a nearby steel skeleton tower.
The original yellow, plastic container has now been replaced by a larger clear container with a red lid. The cache is placed in a crevice beneath a prominent, but not large, overhanging rock. Be sure to place it back such that it isn't accidentally discovered by muggles.