Lost At Sea Memorial, Trinidad, California - Maritime Monuments and Memorials on Waymarking.com

Currently, groundspeak experiences some problems with html encoded waymarks.
If anything at this page doesn't look right, just close and open again. (Usually, the problem fixes itself after reloading a couple of times.)

Countless cliffs and treacherous currents make Trinidad Bay hard to navigate and during the California gold Rush, the dreams of many fortune seekers came to a sudden and tragic end at this part of the Northern California coast. Shortly after the gold rush Trinidad became one of the main ports to transport lumber from northern California's sawmills. The Trinidad Head Lighthouse, built in 1871, made the journey for ships from and to Trinidad much safer.

In 1947, the old lighthouse was replaced by a new one and the US coast guard donated the historic artifacts to the Trinidad Civic Club. In 1949, the club built a concrete replica, called the Trinidad Memorial Lighthouse, in a park downtown. It is so accurate that many visitors (including the author of this waymark) actually believe it to be the actual Trinidad Head Lighthouse. (The real thing is just ten minutes away and is worth the hike!).

Over the years, many sons and daughters of Trinidad did not only watch the ships leave town but followed the call of the sea and many of them never saw their native shores again. In the early 1970s, the Civic Club built a small memorial at the lighthouse for those lost at sea. It started as one marble slab engraved with sea gulls and the words "Lost At Sea. Over the years, it has grown to a pyramidal monument and many additional plaques along the adjacent cement retaining wall.

Lighthouse Friends and Rudy and Alice's Lighthouse Page have more information and more pictures.

And here, you can actually see and hear the ringing of the bell.