New Dungeness Spit, a six-mile flat spit barely visible from a distance, is one of the largest natural spits in the world. Captain George Vancouver named it "New Dungeness" because it reminded him of Dungeness Point on England's southeast coast, where a light has guided mariners since around 1600. A half century later, in 1849, the spot was designated as a site for a lighthouse and on December 14, 1857, that light shown for the first time. It was the second lighthouse established in the Washington territory.

New Dungeness was the last Coast Guard manned lighthouse on the West Coast. In 1994, the last keeper left. The Coast Guard was about to board up the lighthouse when volunteers with the Coast Guard Auxiliary and members of the New Dungeness Chapter of the U.S. Lighthouse Society set in motion a plan that has literally saved the lighthouse.

New Dungeness Lighthouse is now located in the Dungeness Wildlife Refuge at the remote end of a 5 1/2 mile-long sandspit north of Sequim. The refuge is haven to more than 250 species of birds, forty-one species of land mammals, and eight species of marine mammals.

(From Lighthouse Friends.com)

Photo by Donna Smith

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