Ediz Hook Light: Port Angeles's First Beacon
Near Port Angeles, Washington
The long curved spit that shelters Port Angeles harbor is called Ediz Hook, and mariners have relied on a light here since the Civil War era. As early as eighteen sixty-one, private operators maintained warning fires on the spit to guide ships into the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The government later reserved the hook, and a proper lighthouse followed.
That first structure lit up in eighteen sixty-five, a two-story wood building with a tower at one end of its gabled roof. The lighthouse was replaced in nineteen oh-eight with a sturdier structure, then automated in nineteen forty-six when the Coast Guard air station took over the end of the spit. Port Angeles grew from a tiny customs house settlement into one of Washington's main deep-water ports, and this light marked the way through every stage of that growth.
