One of California’s tallest lighthouses has been closed for 25 years, and there’s still a very good reason to drive out to it
Pigeon Point Lighthouse has been off-limits to climbers since December 2001, when a chunk of its cast-iron belt course broke loose and crashed to the ground. The 115-foot tower is still one of the tallest lighthouses on the West Coast, still flashing every ten seconds as an active Coast Guard aid to navigation, and still one of the best reasons to pull off Highway 1 between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz.
You just can’t climb it. Not yet, anyway.
Psst — we made you a West Coast Adventure Map. Nearly 1,900 of our favorite spots, already pinned, ready to load into Google Maps in two clicks — grab it here.
The tower first lit up on November 15, 1872, guiding ships around a headland that had already claimed the Carrier Pigeon, the wrecked clipper the point is named for. Its original first-order Fresnel lens is a genuine relic: 1,008 hand-cut prisms, 16 feet tall, over 2,000 pounds, originally installed at Cape Hatteras before it made the trip around the Horn to California. Crews pulled it out of the lantern room in 2011 for safekeeping, and it now sits at eye level in the fog signal building instead of ten stories up — arguably the better view anyway.
A $16 million restoration finally broke ground in February 2024, and as of this year the tower is still wrapped in scaffolding while contractors rebuild the belt courses in marine-grade stainless steel. Nobody’s climbing the 136 interior steps this summer. But the grounds, the fog signal building, and the lens display have stayed open through the entire closure, and that’s most of what makes the trip worth it anyway.
Admission and parking are both free. You can walk right up to the base of the tower, wander the bluff-top trails, and watch for gray whales and harbor seals from the observation deck behind the fog signal building — no ticket required. The tide pools in the rocky reef below the point are some of the better ones on this stretch of coast, though the immediate area right around the lighthouse itself is closed off to protect nesting birds.
If you want the deeper version, California State Parks runs guided history walks of the grounds on Sunday afternoons, and if you can time a visit for August 15, the park’s hosting “Lighthouses on the Air” — a Victorian Days history tour timed to National Lighthouse Day, with vintage games and a ham radio crew connecting to lighthouses around the world. It’s the kind of oddly specific, free local event that makes a detour worth it on its own.
Here’s the part most visitors don’t expect: you can actually sleep at the base of the lighthouse. The old keepers’ quarters have operated as a Hostelling International hostel since the 1960s, and it stayed open through the entire tower closure. Waking up next to an active lighthouse, with the fog rolling in off the Pacific, is a genuinely different experience than driving in for an afternoon.
Pigeon Point sits between two other spots worth folding into the same trip. Año Nuevo State Park and its elephant seal colony are just up the coast, and Half Moon Bay makes a solid home base if the hostel’s booked up. Both are close enough that Pigeon Point works as a stop, not a whole separate trip.
Dogs aren’t allowed on the lighthouse grounds, drones are banned throughout the park, and there’s no camping at the site itself beyond the hostel beds — so plan accordingly if you’re road-tripping Highway 1 with a pup in the car.
Trip tips: grab a rental car to get out here, lock in your hotel before the good rooms are gone, or skip both and book a camper van instead.
Rules and fees change — always confirm current requirements before you go.
