Point Reyes Lifeboat Station, also known as Point Reyes Lifeboat Rescue Station, is a historic coastal rescue station, located on the

Drake's Bay Drakes Bay (Coast Miwok: ''Tamál-Húye'') is a wide bay named so by U.S. surveyor George Davidson in 1875 along the Point Reyes National Seashore on the coast of northern California in the United States, approximately northwest of San Fra ...

side of

Point Reyes Point Reyes (, meaning "Point of the Kings") is a prominent cape and popular Northern California tourist destination on the Pacific coast. Located in Marin County, it is approximately west-northwest of San Francisco. The term is often applied ...

in northern

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

, United States. It was built in 1927 by the

United States Lifesaving Service The United States Life-Saving ServiceDespite the lack of hyphen in its insignia, the agency itself is hyphenated in government documents including: and was a United States government agency that grew out of private and local humanitarian effort ...

to replace a previous station dating from 1888. It is one of the best-preserved rescue stations of that period on the Pacific coast, retaining elements often lost, including the boat launching infrastructure. It is now a historic property managed by the

National Park Service The National Park Service (NPS) is an agency of the United States federal government within the U.S. Department of the Interior that manages all national parks, most national monuments, and other natural, historical, and recreational propertie ...

as part of

Point Reyes National Seashore Point Reyes National Seashore is a park preserve located on the Point Reyes Peninsula in Marin County, California. As a national seashore, it is maintained by the US National Park Service as an important nature preserve. Some existing agricult ...

. It was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1985, and it was further declared a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...

in 1989. and

Description and history

Point Reyes, located north of

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, has been a major landmark on the California coast since the 16th century, and its topography has also rendered it a graveyard for ships. The point is a roughly triangular projection from the mainland, whose southwestern tip has eastern and western projections. The

Point Reyes Lighthouse The Point Reyes Lighthouse, also known as Point Reyes Light or the Point Reyes Light Station, is a lighthouse in the Gulf of the Farallones on Point Reyes in Point Reyes National Seashore, located in Marin County, California, United States. The ...

is located at the western projection, exposed to the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

, while the lifeboat station is located on the sheltered north side of the eastern projection, facing Drake's Bay. Its principal features are a pier and boathouse, the latter set at the land end of the former. The boathouse is 2-1/2 stories in height, with a hip roof and clapboarded exterior. Its ground floor functions as a boat dock, designed to house a motor boat (the standard rescue boat of the service at the time) and a surfboat. The upper floor provided living quarters for the station crew. The chief officer's quarters were located in a secondary building, set further up the hillside to the west. Point Reyes Lifeboat Rescue Station Inverness CA 5-31-2010 2-22-51 PM

Point Reyes Lifeboat Rescue Station Inverness CA 5-31-2010 2-22-51 PM

Important surviving features of the station include a set of rails used for launching the boats. These are about long, extending into the water some , resting on wooden planking on land, and pilings in the water. Inside the boathouse there are launching cradles, one of which holds ''CG 36542'', one of the rescue boats used during the station's active service period. Due to the dangers of navigating around Point Reyes, it was an early candidate for a life-saving station on the American west coast. In 1888, the

established a station on Ten-Mile Beach, a site from which rescue launches were found to be difficult due to the dangerous surf. This site was purchased in 1913, but was not significantly developed right away, due to

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, and the merger of the service into the new

United States Coast Guard The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is the maritime security, search and rescue, and law enforcement service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the country's eight uniformed services. The service is a maritime, military, mult ...

. The station was built in 1927. It remained in service until 1968, and was transferred to the

the following year. Rescue services were taken over by a new station at Bodega Bay, which was capable of handling the Coast Guard's new standard rescue boats.

References

External links

Point Reyes Official Site
{{authority control National Register of Historic Places in Marin County, California West Marin Transportation buildings and structures in Marin County, California History of Marin County, California National Historic Landmarks in the San Francisco Bay Area Point Reyes National Seashore

Description and history

See also

References

External links