Cabrillo National Monument in Point Loma is about to embark upon commemoration festivities recognizing the 125th anniversary of the change of operation at San Diego’s lighthouses. Open Tower Day is set for Tuesday, March 22 at Old Point Loma Lighthouse. Everyone is welcome to climb to the lantern, or the top of the lighthouse, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The line can get long, but it’s worth the wait. Please wear sun protection. The lighthouse park is open March 22 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Among the celebrated guests will be descendants of several former San Diego light keepers. These include the last living adult children who actually lived at the lower, and still active, light station. Join the event throughout the day to hear stories and see pictures from family photo albums and a special presentation in the auditorium at 11:30 a.m.
Lighthouse interpreters, Living History volunteers and, it is hoped, navigation personnel will be on hand to enhance visits on this important anniversary.
For more information, contact Cabrillo National Monument at (619) 557-5450. Light keeper’s daughters come home to Point Loma Light keeper James Dudley’s daughters are coming home to Point Loma to participate in the 125th anniversary festivities at Cabrillo National Monument on Tuesday and Wednesday, March 22 and 23. The public is invited to come and revel in lively accounts of their years at the lighthouse. History notes
By virtue of its location at the southwesternmost point of the continental United States, the peninsula of Point Loma was the chosen site for one of the first eight lighthouses on the West Coast. But, alas, the original, 1855 Cape Cod structure had a short career as an aid to navigation, just shy of 36 years. Fog and low clouds too often obscured its light.
San Diego was eager to become an important shipping port, but a reliable lighthouse, or two, was required. Point Loma Light Station was then re-established at a lower elevation with a new lighthouse and two keepers’ quarters. A harbor light on Ballast Point was to go into tandem operation but was lighted a few months ahead of the other. There had been complication with the size of the lens fitting into the lantern, which delayed sending a beacon from the lower lighthouse.
Finally, on March 22, 1891, Captain Robert Israel lighted the wicks in the old lighthouse one last time. The following night, on his 68th birthday, he lighted the lamp in the new lighthouse. Over the years, numerous keepers were assigned to Point Loma Light Station. In 1930, James Elliot Dudley arrived as assistant keeper.
Dudley had served aboard an East Coast lightship before journeying on an Indian motorcycle from home-state Connecticut to California in 1922. He secured jobs aboard two lighthouse tenders and three light stations prior to Point Loma.
Dudley chanced to meet pretty Violet Warner, a visitor to the lighthouse, adn offered her a look at the prized chickens he was raising. The two courted and were married a few months later, in October of 1930. Dudley’s daughters
Patricia Dudley was born in 1931 and Joan in 1933, during their father’s tenure at Point Loma. Today, they are the last living Point Loma keepers’ kids whose lighthouse home was under the old guard of the U.S. Lighthouse Service. A son, Robert, was born in 1944, but by then administration of lighthouses had been transferred (in 1939) to the U.S. Coast Guard. America’s lighthouse keepers either retired or took military commissions based on years served. Joan and Patricia had no other reference but that home was confined within a military reservation. Head keeper, Milford Johnson, had a daughter, Lexi, and there were few others who came and went with whom to play. A particularly memorable incident took place in January of 1944, when the girls were reading on the sun porch of their home, below a large window with 105 small panes of glass. The front door, with its large embossed pane, stood in a nearby alcove. When the winter sun became too warm, the girls moved into the living room, closing the door behind them.
“We were not there long,” Joan said, “when KABOOM! The glass in the front door blew into the sun porch, shards of it embedding inches into the floor.” As happened, a defective fuse in a 6-inch, high explosive projectile caused a premature detonation at nearby Battery Humphreys. Five soldiers were killed in the blast. “We were isolated out there,” Joan recalls. “We ate plenty of fresh lobster caught in traps dad set in the eelgrass. And we pounded lots of abalone. Dad would reach under the rocks with a tire iron and bring gunny sacks full up to the house.” The kids often rode Army transport vehicles to school in Loma Portal. Both girls graduated from Point Loma High School. Patricia says, “I was in the first class to spend three years at Dana Junior High, 1943-46, and then Point Loma High, 1946-49.” Roller-skating in the old underground mess hall and on the cement catch basin was a favorite pastime. A swimming hole with tiger sharks showed itself at low tide. Baby octopuses were lugged to biology class. “We had a path near the flagpole down to the beach below the lighthouse,” Patricia says. “There were times I asked Dad if we could go to a real beach like Ocean Beach.”
He’d scold, “You have your own beach!” Had the keeper been aware that his daughters dreamed of experiences beyond their lighthouse home?
“Mother made sure we had nice clothes to wear,” Joan remembers. “Dad had strict beliefs, that one needed very few clothes. Mother was a seamstress and made our dresses for little or nothing.”
James Dudley was all business when it came to lighthouse and groundskeeping. “We had to be quiet when dad was sleeping after he worked his night shifts. We didn’t make a sound.”
Lightkeepers, it seems, were jacks-of all trades. They maintained numerous outbuildings, kept machines repaired and quarters painted, in addition to their work in the lantern, lest the USLHS inspector make a surprise visit. Great gardens were groomed, glorious flowers and trees. Fruits and vegetables were raised to supplement meager incomes. Gun-bearing bunkers were visible from the keepers’ gardens. And just 70 feet from the house stood a 50-mm anti-aircraft machine gun. Violet’s children wore dog tags and were practiced in the use of gas masks and the taste of malt tablets, all stored in a partial basement under the kitchen. “Wafer-like, a quarter-inch thick, chalky and malty. We didn’t like them,” Joan says. “And we had a battalion of 300 men camped in our backyard.”
A home-built HAM radio station filled a portion of the Dudley dining room. Cousin Franklin reminded the girls that their father was in the wireless loop looking for Amelia Earhart when her plane went missing in 1937. Wireless operators were also called into war service.
War, indeed! The bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 affected changes at Point Loma Light Station. Keepers were assigned duties elsewhere in the war effort. Dudley, an expert in electronics, was put in charge of the LORAN station (long-range navigation) across from the cemetery. Armed guards stood watch at the station. The light in the tower went dark. Windows were covered with tarpaper. Dwellings, the tower, outbuildings, fences and even the sidewalks were painted in olive-drab camouflage. Keeper Johnson rigged a light under the front fender of his car, for what light it provided going down the long hill at night. Patricia remembers standing out on the point watching fighter planes leaving North Island for carriers at sea. “I counted to 1,000, as far as I could count.” James Dudley was promoted head keeper in 1939, and the family relocated to the big house that had been added to the station in 1913. “I helped my parents move,” Joan chuckles. “Wonder how many wagon loads I toted up that hill?
“Our parents were very social people. They went to, and had, a lot of parties. Clear the dining room, roll up the carpet, and have a great time of it.”
Dudley retired from the Coast Guard in 1950, and the family left the light station to settle in a home with an avocado orchard on Mount Helix.
The girls married, moved on, raised children, took jobs, and enjoy grand- and great-grandchildren. Today, Patricia lives in Crest, Calif. You can occasionally find her at Cabrillo National Monument wearing a lightkeeper’s uniform and volunteering for the Park Service. Its Living History program is fully enriched: Patricia is living history!
Joan’s home is in Klamath Falls, Ore. Brother Robert resides in Germany.
Patricia and Joan, ultimately, experienced the far-flung world beyond Point Loma Light Station. “Yet coming home,” Patricia sighs, “it feels like it belongs to us regardless of time.”