Lighthouse visitors help with upkeep

Published 1:30 am Saturday, March 7, 2026

SEQUIM — Anyone who rents out the New Dungeness Lighthouse is helping to keep the light shining from the Dungeness Spit.

“Everybody whose been in and out of that lighthouse has been a part of this,” said Sarah Miller, president of the New Dungeness Light Station Association, which is dedicated to preserving and protecting the light station.

Miller spoke Thursday afternoon during a presentation on the lighthouse at Sherwood Assisted Living.

“A light station is the tower, the Keeper’s Quarters, the barn and a transformer building with an emergency generator in it,” Miller said. “A navigational installation is more than just a lighthouse.”

The light station at one point also had a fog apparatus building, which would send out tones when there was too much.

When people hear about the New Dungness Lighthouse, they often ask what happened to the old lighthouse, Miller said.

“The old Dungeness Lighthouse is still there,” she said with a grin, explaining that the New Dungeness name came from sailors who thought Dungeness Spit resembled Dungeness in Kent, England.

The lighthouse has been continuously staffed since the light first came on in 1857. It’s located at almost the end of the 5-plus-mile Dungeness Spit north of Sequim. The spit also is a national wildlife refuge established in 1915 as a bird sanctuary.

Dungeness Spit is the longest spit in the United States and is growing by about 13 feet a year, although some years it loses sand.

The lighthouse tower originally was built at 100 feet tall, Miller said, but it developed cracks and no one knows why.

“The decision was made to lower the tower by about 30 feet in 1927,” she said. “We still find bricks from the original tower that work their way out of the sand.”

The tower is a cone that narrows as it rises, so when the tower was lowered, the lantern room no longer fit. The light shining from the tower now is from the abandoned Admiralty Head Lighthouse.

Although the lighthouse is on the state and national historic registers, it’s maintained as it was in the 1930s, rather than when it was originally built. An artesian water well was drilled in 1930 and goes down 65 feet so the water is always running and there’s no salt water intrusion.

A power cable was laid in 1933 which runs from Three Crabs Road. The cable has been replaced several times and will need to replaced again in the near future, Miller said. The power belongs to the U.S. Coast Guard, but the light station association has a free lease through the Coast Guard through 2043 after it took over lighthouse operations in 1994.

Today, five buildings remain on the light station property. The tower building, built in 1857, originally housed the keeper and their family. The barn was constructed in 1887 and has a hay loft which children used to rollerskate in, Miller said.

The oil house, built in 1892, originally housed whale oil for the lighthouse and was renovated in 2007.

The generator building was built in 1933 and a 50-kilowatt generator was installed in 2008.

The Keepers Quarters was added to the property in 1904 to provide housing for the head keeper and their family when staff was expanded to support new fog signals and boilers. At that point, the assistant keeper lived in the tower building.

The Keepers Quarters building is now rented out by the room, or sometimes the entire building, to people for a week at a time. During that week, those staying there are expected to function as the keepers of the lighthouse. They work together to provide tours, including up the 74 steps in the tower to the lantern room; water and mow the lawn; raise and lower the flag; maintain the visitor’s restroom; polish the brass and sweep the tower stairs; report emergencies; and run the generator, if necessary.

Scheduling for 2027 rentals opened at 12:01 a.m. Jan. 2 and 80 percent of the spots were taken within a few hours, Miller said.

“People plug into this,” she said. “If you stay there once, you want to get back in.”

For more information, go to newdungenesslighthouse.com.

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Reporter Emily Hanson can be reached by email at emily.hanson@peninsuladailynews.com.