Location: Located in Lahaina Harbor, on the western end of Maui.
Latitude: N 20.87219
Longitude: W 156.67869
Year Constructed: 1917 (station established 1840). Active
Tower Height: 39 feet Focal Plane: 44 feet
Pyramidal reinforced concrete tower, painted white with gray trim. Hawaii's oldest light station.
Between 1820 and 1860, Hawaii was popular with whalers as a stopover point for refitting and reprovisioning. The high cost of supplies and port charges at Honolulu made Lahaina the port of choice for whale ships. To aid the ships in reaching the port, the first lighthouse in Hawaii was constructed at Lahaina in 1840.
In 1905 a new wooden, pyramidal, skeleton tower was fifty-five feet tall and had an enclosed workroom near the top, just below the lens platform. The lens had red and white sectors. As long as a mariner remained in the white sector, a safe approach to the port could be made.
In 1917, the wooden tower was replaced by the current thirty-nine foot, pyramidal, concrete tower. A metal ladder leads up one side of the tower to the platform from which a fixed red light is shown. The durability and ease of maintaining such concrete towers led to their wide deployment throughout the islands. A metal plaque placed at the tower in 1984 by the Lahaina Restoration Foundation, the caretakers for the lighthouse, gives a brief history of the towers built at the site, which was originally home to the "oldest Pacific lighthouse."
In 2009, the Coast Guard converted the Lahaina Lighthouse to solar power.
Location: Located on Ninini Point just south of the airport in Lihue.
Latitude: N 21.9549
Longitude: W 159.33573
Year Constructed: 1933 (station established 1897). Active
Tower Height: 80 feet Focal Plane: 112 feet
Reinforced concrete tower; DCB-24 aerobeacon (1985). The original 4th order Fresnel lens, removed in 1984
Nawiliwili Lighthouse
Nini Point, which marks the northern entrance to Nawiliwili Bay, was leased by the Hawaiian government from the Lihue Plantation in 1897 as a site for a lighthouse. Several light structures have served at the point over the years. The first was a wooden, frame tower, forty feet high and surmounted by a lamp room, which housed a light and reflector at an elevation of seventy feet above the sea.
The original Nawiliwili trestle tower was torn down and replaced with a lens lantern atop a thirty-three and a half foot tall mast. The new light was first exhibited on December 22, 1906, and was rebuilt in 1923.
The present eighty-six -foot concrete tower was constructed in 1932 along with a new three-bedroom keeper's dwelling set on concrete block footings.
The Nawiliwili Lighthouse was automated in 1953, however an attendant remained at the station and was responsible for routine maintenance of the Nawiliwili Light and seven minor lights on the island. The lantern room has been removed from the tower, compromising the structure's beauty.
Barbers Point Lighthouse
Barbers Point, HI
Location: Located on Barbers Point, west of Honolulu.
Latitude: N 21.29639
Longitude: W 158.1062
Year Constructed: 1933 (station established 1888). Active
Tower Height: 71 feet Focal Plane: 85 feet
Reinforced concrete tower, painted white. The lantern was removed in 1964; a DCB-224 aerobeacon is mounted atop the capped tower..
During the first part of 1888, a forty-two-foot tower was constructed of coral stone laid in a cement mortar. Upon completion, the tower was painted white and topped with the red lantern room. The first keeper, A. Along, assumed responsibility for maintaining the light on April 9th 1888.
By 1910, an assistant keeper’s dwelling and an oil house had been added to the station. An oil vapor lamp was installed in 1912, and a new keeper’s dwelling was built atop concrete piers just west of the tower in 1915.
By 1930, the tower was showing signs of deterioration and plans were made to replace the structure. In 1933 constraction began for erecting a seventy-two-foot, concrete, cylindrical tower next to the original one. At the same time, generators were installed at the station to supply electricity to both the lighthouse and the keepers' dwellings. The lens was transferred from the old tower to the new one, where it was first lit on December 29, 1933.
On April 15, 1964, the Fresnel lens was replaced by a thirty-six-inch airway beacon, and the last keeper, left the now automated lighthouse later that year on December 7th. The lantern room was likely removed from the Barbers Point Lighthouse when it was automated. In 1985, the airway beacon was replaced by a Double Barreled Rotating Optic Directional Code Beacon, which increased the range of the light to twenty-four nautical miles.
Location: Located at the base of the now extinct Diamond Head Volcano.
Latitude: N 21.25573
Longitude: W 157.80956
Year Constructed: 1918 (station established 1899). Active
Tower Height: 57 feet Focal Plane: 147 feet
Square pyramidal reinforced concrete tower, topped by a round watch room and lantern; original Barbier et Bénard 3rd order Fresnel lens. Lighthouse painted white; lantern roof is red.
The original structure was a forty-foot-tall, iron, framework tower built by Honolulu Iron Works. Barbier and Benard of France manufactured the third-order Fresnel lens along with the lantern room for the tower. Due to concerns over the stability of the structure, the open framework was enclosed with walls constructed of coral-rock, excavated from a quarry on O`ahu. The light, which had a red sector to mark dangerous shoals and reefs, was first lit on July 1, 1899.
In 1917, funds were allocated for constructing a fifty-five-foot tower of reinforced concrete on the original foundation. Scaffolding was built around the old tower and the original lantern room was removed and placed atop a new metal framework, allowing the continuous operation of the light. The old tower was then dismantled and replaced with the modern concrete structure, which strongly resembles the original tower. One notable difference is that the old tower had an external staircase that wrapped partway around the tower, whereas the new tower houses an internal, cast-iron, spiral stairway. When the tower was complete, the lantern room containing the Fresnel lens was placed atop the new lighthouse.
The station was automated in 1924. Subsequently, the dwelling became home to the Coast Guard.
