Showing posts with label Stuart Island. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stuart Island. Show all posts

11/25/20

Turn Point Light Station

WWII era photo of the Turn Point light station, with a military observation tower in the left of the image.  Image from Wikimedia Commons

Turn Point on Stuart Island marks the ragged and liquid edge of the contiguous United States, and like many of the most northerly rocky points of the San Juan Islands, it is graced with a historic lighthouse that helped (and still helps, though now with an automated light) to guide ships along the channels between Canada and the United States.  And, like many of the historic light stations, it is in very good repair, such that if you were a visitor to this place from the turn of the century you might not immediately know that you had arrived in 2020.  Case in point, the image above is ~80 years old, and the scene today is different only in minor detail:

1 November 2020 photo of the Turn Point light station, looking north from the Keeper's house

The most notable difference is the observation tower at left in the photo, which was used as an observation post during WWII...another symbol of changing uses of Washington's shoreline.