The Inalienable Lighthouse Lens of Ferndale, California
At the great northern elbow of California, in the days when the state's entire coastline was yet "lost," a stocky little lighthouse shouted a powerful warning to the Pacific. It is the great Fresnel lens of this lighthouse that is the subject of this narrative. On December 1, 1868, the 16-sided Cape Mendocino Lighthouse began to signal one white flash every 30 seconds by way of a slowly rotating, 16-sided first-order Fresnel lens manufactured by L. Sautter et Cie of Paris, France. The tower stood on top of a concrete-filled hole dug into rock at 425 feet of elevation.