Title: The Lighthouse at Point Conception

Year: 2000

Master Artists: Vicki Andersen & Linda Gooch, Lompoc, CA
Location: 131 South H Street, next to the Floral Flag;

Description: This mural depicts various views of the lighthouse located at point Conception on California’s rugged central coast.

In 1852 a contract was signed by A. Gibbons and Francis Kelly to build eight lighthouses along the California seaboard. One of them was scheduled to be built at Point Conception. Work progressed slowly, but in 1854, at the top of a large bluff at the Point, the structure – consisting of a brick tower rising through the middle of a 1-1/2 story dwelling – was completed. But it did not become operational until the schooner General Pierce landed at nearby Coho Bay in Sept. 1855 with a Fresnel First Order Seacoast Light manufactured in Paris by master glassmaker Henri Le Paute at a cost of $65,000. For almost 150 years, the lighthouse has served as an important navigational aid along the mariner’s nightmare stretch of coast known as “the graveyard of ships.”