Point Loma Lighthouse - East and North Elevations - Green - Etching Paper Print

Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, the first European navigator to reach the coast of Alta California ... At last on Thursday, September 28, 1542, after three months of voyaging, Rodriguez (Cabrillo) and his men "discovered a port, closed and very good which they named San Miguel. (They were in fact at San Diego, and had achieved for themselves the glory of discovering Alta California, — all unwittingly, for to them it was the same land as before).

San Diego Hill (Point Loma) came under the notice of the Congress of the United States when in 1848 the first provision for aids to navigation on the Pacific Coast was made. At that time the sum of $15,000 was set aside for lighthouses at Cape Disappointment at the mouth of the Columbia River and at New Dungeness at the entrance to Puget Sound. This amount proving inadequate, Congress appropriated $143,000 for nine lighthouses, a fog signal and several buoys on the California and Oregon coasts. Not until 1855, however, did Point Loma Light, the last of the series of Pacific Coast beacons then erected, begin its service. November 15, 1855 the lamp was lit for the first time. There had been a series of delays and mishaps, including the shipwreck at the Columbia River bar of the bark "Oriole," which lost the materials for Point Loma and four other lighthouses. As a result of this disaster, it was recommended by the lighthouse engineer "that hereafter all estimates for the Pacific Coast be four times higher than for like work on the Atlantic."