When sisters Mary and Ella Smith arrived at Point Fermin in 1874 in what is now San Pedro, they found a new lighthouse in a remote wilderness. Their job was to keep the beacon beaming as ships, docks – and eventually a port – sprung up in the new City of Los Angeles.
At the time, the Palos Verdes Peninsula where the lighthouse still stands was just an empty hill – not filled with homes like it is now. The closest place to get groceries and supplies was Wilmington, a long, muddy and sometimes impossible horse-and-buggy ride away.
Martha Austin McKinzie of the Point Fermin Lighthouse Society says living there wasn’t easy, but ships needed to know where to turn into the growing harbor.
“The lighthouse was the focal point, the ‘hello, we’re here,’ the star, the Hollywood sign, whatever you want to say,” McKinzie says. “It was the key thing that brought mariners here.”
The Victorian-style lighthouse, now one of the oldest buildings in the city of Los Angeles, is wrapping up a year of celebrating its 150th birthday. The city has grown up around the lighthouse, which perches on the cliffs overlooking what’s now the largest port complex in the United States.
When the Smith sisters arrived 150 years ago, this was what McKinzie calls the “wild west.”
The sisters had come from a lighthouse keeper family in Washington State. They learned the trade from their dad, which enabled them to work at a time when women largely weren’t in the workforce.
And lighthouse-keeping was a lot of hard work. The sisters kept a flame beneath the lens lit all night, constantly wiping soot off the windows to keep the beacon visible, and winding up heavy weights to keep the lens rotating.
The Smith sisters were eventually pushed out by a man who wanted the job, after a few incidents that sound worthy of “The Real Housewives of Point Fermin” – his wife allegedly made death threats and chased a worker with an ax.
McKinzie’s family, the Austins, came along in 1917. McKinzie’s grandfather became the lighthouse keeper here with his large family.
His two daughters, Thelma and Juanita, were teenagers who would sneak out to go to dances.
“Their father was up topside, doing his job. They would raise up this window, crawl over there,” McKinzie says, pointing to a landing outside of the window in the lighthouse, “put their shoes back on and off to the races.”
Thelma and Juanita Austin, the second set of sisters to oversee Point Fermin Lighthouse, pose in an old photo. The sisters first came to live at the lighthouse when their dad was the keeper. Photo courtesy of Martha Austin McKinzie and family.
After McKinzie’s grandparents died, Thelma Austin took over as lighthouse keeper in 1925, with Juanita Austin as her assistant. They managed the lighthouse on their own for a couple of years until it was turned over to the City of Los Angeles.
The lighthouse kept plugging along until the bombing of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.
“The light itself was extinguished at the start of World War II, so that the areas wouldn’t be attractive to any sort of aerial bombing,” says Mona Dallas Reddick, president of the San Pedro Bay Historical Society.
That was the last time Point Fermin was used as a lighthouse.
The U.S. Navy took it over, turning it into a lookout for submarines and enemy ships.
And the lighthouse lens that had acted as a beacon for so long disappeared. No one knew where it was until decades later, when it turned up in a real estate office in Malibu.
Now the lens is back in the restored lighthouse, which offers free afternoon tours Tuesday through Sunday.
Martha Austin McKinzie (black in front) stands on the steps of the Point Fermin Lighthouse as volunteers gather for their annual singing of “Happy Birthday” to the lighthouse December 15, 2024. Photo by Susan Valot.
On its birthday each December, volunteers show their love by singing “Happy Birthday” to the lighthouse, hanging out the windows that face the sea. They direct their voices toward the mariners the lighthouse and its keepers spent decades protecting.