❖ With McDonald at the Patos Island Light Station ❖ 1959

Patos Island Light Station,
an active aid to navigation in the San Juan Islands.
Active Cove is a favorite anchorage of fishermen and
yachtsmen and the historic place for unloading supplies
from the Coast Guard vessels. 
Photograph by the US Coast Guard.

Patos Island was discovered by a Spanish explorer in 1791. We trailed local author June Burn when she visited the island for an article for her 100 Days in the San Juans series for the Seattle P-I in 1946. Let's return with well-known historian/journalist Lucile McDonald when she stopped to visit the resident Coast Guard crew manning the station in the summer of 1959.

 "The island was named Patos, meaning "ducks," in 1791 by a rain-drenched Spanish explorer trying to pilot his schooner through the tidal currents in the southern reaches of Georgia Strait.
      Patos, northernmost of the San Juan Islands, is known to most boaters as the site of the lighthouse, the most important one in the archipelago. Though its lantern is of the fourth order (40,000 candlepower) and only 38' above the ground, it is a beam visible to southbound mariners for a long distance.
      Since the entire island on which the beacon stands is a lighthouse reserve, there are no other occupants of its 206 acres. A lone cabin is said to have stood in the woods near the east end years ago, a relic of an elderly squatter. No trace of his house remains.
      Patos Island Lighthouse was constructed in 1893 and rebuilt in 1908. A radio beacon was installed by the Coast Guard in 1937 and the station's fog signal was modernized in 1958.
      New living quarters went up in 1958 where the garden for the keepers' two-story duplex had been. The old house was torn down and now the four coastguardsmen residing at Patos have the most modern apartments of any light station in WA. Two of the men of the crew like the island so well they are on their second tour of duty there.
      Patos most of the year has a pleasant climate and summer brings it, numerous visitors. Nearly 350 called last year, attracted by the sheltered anchorage in Active Cove, just south of the light.
      Active Cove was named for the first American survey vessel operating in these waters. Alden Point, where the lighthouse stands, was listed by that name on an 1858 chart in honor of Lieut. Alden, who commanded the steamship ACTIVE. 
      Government records show that the ACTIVE in 1853 conducted reconnaissance in WA Territory, chiefly in the Gulf of Georgia. She refueled at the Bellingham Bay and Nanaimo coal mines, receiving the cargo from Indian canoes at the latter place.
      The ACTIVE also was employed in Haro and Rosario Straits in 1854.
      In 1858 Alden and his ship were in the service of the Boundary Commission. This was the vessel's last season in the Puget Sound area.
      A part of the time a land party under James S. Lawson occupied a survey station on the east point of Patos Island. The steamship, meanwhile, made hydrographic studies along Canada's Saturna Island. Charts of that year labeled the Canadian Gulf Islands as part of the Washington Coast.

L-R: H. D. McDonald, Seattle, and
D. A. Nelson, engineman second class, USCG.
Hunting fossils in the sandstone of the
west side of Patos Island.
This photo is from the archives of the 
Saltwater People Historical Society©

      Alden's reconnaissance served for more than 100 years, except for some minor additions in 1891, when a formal survey was conducted. 
      This year the US Coast and Geodetic Survey is checking again, completing the resurvey of San Juan waters which began some years ago. Only the south end of Georgia Strait remains to be covered.
      Two members of a survey crew moved to Patos Island 1 May to operate a short-range electronic-control station here in conjunction with another at Point Roberts. The survey ship HODGSON also is working in the area.
      When the 1859 surveys are finished, tidal-current charts can be used for the entire San Juan Archipelago, an aid to small-boat navigation for which there have been many requests.
      Like other lighthouses, Patos maintains a guest book, which reflects the changes in social life at the station. Visitors are rare when the book began in 1895. They were limited mainly to inhabitants of nearby islands. Among the regular callers was the lightkeeper at East Point on Saturna Island, a beacon which antedates Patos.
       With last year's improvements, the old generators in the tower were removed and new ones were installed permitting the use of electrical appliances in the homes. 
      A major problem still to be solved is that of obtaining a supply of water. The well at the station became polluted several years ago when diesel oil tanks leaked into it.
      Part of the joy of living on the island is derived from the abundance of sea life found there. In spring the ground is carpeted with wildflowers. 
      Directly in front of the lighthouse are heavy tide rips and whirlpools, in contrast to the sheltered water of Active Cove. Both customs vessels and Coast Guard craft have lain in the tiny harbor in years past, waiting for smugglers rumored to be abroad.
      This little cove is a great asset to the light station. Minnie's Beach, at the east end, got its name from a lightkeeper's wife who liked to sun herself there.
      The cove was the scene of many episodes described by Helen Glidden in her book, The Light on the Island. The author's father was Edward Durgan, a keeper who moved with his wife and 13 children to Patos in August 1905. He already had lived at the lighthouse for a period some years earlier.
       In those days the place was extremely isolated and keepers rowed to the mainland or to Orcas Island to supply their needs. They were out of luck in emergencies. Three of the Durgan children died because of the difficulty in obtaining medical aid promptly.
       This can't happen today. A few weeks ago Mrs. C. P. Geer, wife of one of the keepers, caught a hand in her washing machine. A few minutes later a Navy helicopter from Whidbey Island landed behind the light, picked her up and transported her to Oak Harbor, where she transferred to an airplane and went to a Seattle hospital. She was back home before the day was over." 

1959, June: Above text was written by Lucile S. McDonald for the Seattle Times.
She wrote or co-authored 28 books; her archives have been donated to the Special Collections Division, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.

1974: The Light was automated.

1974: Washington State Parks and Recreation Commission began operating Patos Island as a State Park, under a lease from the Bureau of Land Management.
The 207-acre State Marine Park with 20,000 ft of saltwater shoreline is owned by the BLM. The State Parks maintains 2 mooring buoys and a 1.5-mi loop trail open year round, according to their website which can be viewed here

1977: The Patos Island Light Station was listed on the US National Register of Historic Places. 

2007: A Non-Profit Keepers of Patos Light was organized by two friends. Look at the work they have managed with a group of volunteers. 
Photographs from the archives of the Saltwater People Historical Society©

❖ LIGHTHOUSE LADS ❖ 1946 with June Burn

PATOS ISLAND LIGHTSTATION
San Juan Archipelago, WA.
Photo by Corbett, undated.
Original from the archives of the S.P.H.S.©
Click image to enlarge.

Day Thirteen of 100 Days in the San Juans 

June Burn. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer July 1946.

Patos Island.

Hazy sun at 9 o'clock on a calm Tuesday morning. I'm sitting alone in the San Juanderer while Farrar goes ashore on Patos to take a picture of the lighthouse and the boys we met there last night.
      On Patos, we found the sweetest graveled beach and sheltered cove and sleeping plateau we've ever had in all our camping years. The beach fell away sharply so that the boat hadn't such an easy chance to go aground as it had on Skipjack last Friday night. Above the beach on a jutting point that overlooked Orcas and Sucia and Waldron we spread the tarp and sleeping bags in deep, soft grass. It rained during the night, pat-pat-pat, right close above our heads on the canvas––a sweet sound when you know that everything is well covered against it.
      As soon as we had anchored, we found the trail up from the beach, around the point to the lighthouse. The San Juanderer looked like a big glaucous-winged gull sitting on the rich green water of Active Cove. The ubiquitous russet-back thrush kept whistling his evening song from the fir and madrona woods behind the shore.
      Scrub salal forms most of the undergrowth of the forest here, with clumps of ocean spray every now and then to light the forest.
      How open and grassy Alden Point where the lighthouse stands! There are two dwellings, several smaller structures, water tanks, the lighthouse at the very end of the point overlooking Boundary Pass, Canadian waters and islands, and facing Saturna Light.
      Instead of the two families we expected to find, four young boys are stationed here. the CO is a 26-year-old Indian boy, William E. Moody, from Tulsa, OK; the youngest, Paul W. Haltkamp, 20, from Stockport, IA; Joseph J. Mattero, from San Francisco. Haltkamp says he has been longest––too long––at this lonely base. He has been here three months.
      The CG cutter comes once a week from Seattle bringing supplies. They are allowed 99 cents per man per day for food but from the look of this list that they sent in last week, I'd say they are out of pocket themselves now and then. Here it is: 2 lbs of cocoa, 25 lbs of sugar, 5 lbs brown sugar, 2 jars berry jam, 7 loaves white bread, 4 lbs butter, 5 gallons fresh milk, 6 dozen eggs, 5 lbs cheese, 10 lbs ice cream mix, 4 lbs hotcake flour, half a case each of peaches, pineapple, peas, canned milk, 10 lbs apples, 5 lbs oranges, 3 lbs grapefruit, 3 heads lettuce, 3 lbs carrots, 5 lbs tomatoes, 5 lbs onions, one cured ham, 5 lbs bacon, 6 lbs round steak, 5 lbs beef roast, 5 lbs hamburger. 
      Each boy cooks for himself, eats when he chooses, for they keep a 24-hour shift at the light, each boy serving six hours on and 12 off. 
      Down at the lighthouse there is a very large––oh, 6-ft high, 8-ft wide, say––double panel of dials, clocks, levers, lights and other mysterious gadgets. But the main business seems to be transacted over the radio telephone. We heard them tune in to that and the results were as funny and unintelligible as the tobacco auctioneer's jargon.
      At the end of the complicated rigmarole we learn that our old friend; Commander Zeusler, now Rear Admiral Zeusler, coast guard commander, 13th Naval District, is on terminal leave and Capt. A.M. Martinson is taking his place for peacetime duty in these waters.
      We thought how strange to get the news of Admiral Zeusler's retirement like this! (Professor Thompson, did you know it? You went to Alaska on what was then Commander Zeusler's ship and here he is an admiral and on terminal leave, that must mean retirement.) Well, well, visit far-away lighthouses and keep up with your neighbors.
See you tomorrow. June.
A post on the author Helene Glidden and the book of her childhood on Patos Island can be seen here.