Kilauea Lighthouse
Posted by: 
Romans1116
N 22° 13.904 W 159° 24.119
4Q E 458574 N 2458531
Kilauea Lighthouse is in the Kilauea National Wildlife Refuge at the northernmost point of the Hawaiian Island, Kauai.
Waymark Code: WMPXH
Location: Hawaii, United States
Date Posted: 09/08/2006
Views: 33
The following is excerpted from the Kilauea Lighthouse page at LighthouseFriends.com (http://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=139). Other relevant websites are at Hawaiiweb.com (
visit link) and the US Fish and Wildlife Service website (
visit link)
Kaua`i, The Garden Island, has six minor navigational lights and two primary seacoast lights distributed around its shoreline. The two major lights are Kilauea Point Light and Nawiliwili Light. The Lighthouse Board asserted that a first order light at Kilauea Point, the northernmost point of the inhabited Hawaiian Islands, would serve as a landfall light for ship traffic from the Orient.
Kilauea Point, a narrow, lava peninsula protruding from the northern shore of Kaua`i, was purchased from the Kilauea Sugar Plantation Company in 1909 "for the consideration of one dollar". Before construction could begin, a method for delivering supplies to the point had to be developed. Due to the lack of good roads in the area, the decision was made to bring the materials in by sea.
The lighthouse tender Kukui would anchor offshore and then dispatch small boats laden with supplies to a cove near the point. Since there was no beach, the boats would anchor to cleats cemented into the lava rocks at the point. A boom derrick, constructed on a ledge ninety feet above the water, would pluck the supplies from the boats and place them on a loading platform 110 feet above the water.
Work on the tower began in August of 1912. The ironwork for the tower's spiral staircase and lantern room was produced by the Champion Iron Company of Kenton, Ohio, while the second-order, bivalve, Fresnel lens and clockworks were manufactured in France by Barbier, Bernard and Turenne, at a cost of $12,000. When the lens arrived, it was discovered that the assembly instructions were in French. After receiving help for translating the instruction, the lens was assembled in the tower and then floated on a bed of mercury contained in a circular trough, nine inches deep with an inside diameter of roughly six feet. The revolving lens, which was first illuminated on May 1, 1913, produced a double flash every ten seconds.