Piedras Blancas Light
— — the same light, every night since 1875.
Not only on a wall.
“A coastal headland on Highway 1, six miles north of San Simeon, where cormorants have whitened the offshore rocks enough to give the place its Spanish name. The lighthouse was lit on 15 February 1875, originally a hundred-foot brick tower carrying a first-order Fresnel lens shipped from Paris. A 1948 earthquake and the smaller shocks that followed damaged the upper sections; the lantern and watch rooms were removed and the tower capped at about seventy feet. The original Fresnel lens is now displayed in the town of Cambria, twenty miles south. A modern beacon still turns through the dome each night. The elephant seal rookery begins a mile down the beach.
Piedras Blancas Light, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Piedras Blancas Light Station sits on a coastal headland of San Luis Obispo County, California, about six miles north of the town of San Simeon along Highway 1. The Spanish name means 'white rocks' and refers to the bleached offshore stacks visible from the headland, coloured by cormorant guano. The station was first lit on 15 February 1875 to mark a long stretch of California coast that had taken several ships in the previous decade. The site is now managed as an Outstanding Natural Area by the Bureau of Land Management, which has overseen it since the transfer from the U.S. Coast Guard in 2001.
The tower was built of brick, originally rising about a hundred feet in five tapered sections to a first-order Fresnel lens, the largest classification of lighthouse optic. The lens was manufactured by Henry-Lepaute of Paris and installed in 1875, sending a fixed white light visible roughly twenty-five miles to sea. The Long Beach earthquake of 1948 and the smaller earthquakes of the following year damaged the lantern room and the upper watch room; both were removed in 1949, and the tower was capped with an aluminum dome at about seventy feet. The original Fresnel lens is now displayed in Cambria, twenty miles south of the headland.
Access to the station grounds is by guided tour only. The Bureau of Land Management and the nonprofit Friends of Piedras Blancas run tours on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday mornings, weather permitting, departing from the former Piedras Blancas Motel a mile and a half north of the gate. Tours last about two hours and cover the keepers' compound, the tower, and the bluff. The elephant seal rookery a mile south of the headland is open every day with no fee and no reservation. The closest towns for lodging are San Simeon and Cambria; the closest commercial airport is San Luis Obispo, about seventy miles south.