Brown’s Point Lighthouse
Tacoma
First lit: 1887
Extinguished: 1963
47.3059 -122.444
Oscar Brown was the station’s first keeper in the early 1900s. He moved his wife, a horse and a cow, and a piano onto this remote point. He often rowed the three or four miles to Tacoma to attend concerts. An accomplished musician, when the roads finally reached the lighthouse he became a noted piano teacher when he was not tending the light.
The concrete block lighthouse, though less than a hundred yards from the house, was often inaccessible when major storms flooded the swampy ground. Brown would take a rowing dory out through the mud to add oil or trim the wick.
The striking mechanism for the fog bell had to be wound every 45 minutes. Brown slept little during the long spells of dense fog that fr
