Angel Island (part one)

If you look closely, you can see him.

the Lighthouse

So...
I am currently out of town. Some of you may have noticed that I haven't been around or responding to comments; well, that would be why. Or maybe none of you noticed, and I just thing too highly of myself. I probably do think too highly of myself, but that doesn't mean that absolutely none of you noticed.

Anyway...!

Back in February, my wife abducted me for my birthday. We went out to Point Reyes, and you can see all the stuff from that if you go back and read the posts. However, what we didn't do was go out to the lighthouse. Even if we'd had the time, it was raining that day and too windy and the lighthouse was closed. I suppose there's a chance that people could get blown off the path down to it. At any rate, we finally took a trip to see the lighthouse back in April, so, while I'm gone away, you can look at some of the pictures.

Abandoned Places: Holland Island

The Holland Island settlement in Chesapeake Bay goes back to the 1600s. In the early 1900s, it was one of the largest inhabited islands in the bay, but it was also being drastically affected by wind and tide erosion. In 1914, the residents began moving to the mainland, many disassembling their houses and taking them with them. The last of the islands permanent residents moved in 1918 after a storm damaged the church, which was finally moved off the island in 1922. For a while, some of the previous island dwellers tried to use the island as a fishing base, but they gave up on even that after not too many years. In 2010, the last house (built in 1888 and pictured above) finally collapsed.

There was also a lighthouse built to the south of the island in 1889.

One of the keepers, Ulman Owens was found dead there in 1931. There was blood at the scene and evidence of a struggle but no wounds on the body. The death was judged to be from natural causes and no further investigation took place. Then, in 1957, three Naval pilots bombed the station, mistaking it for their actual target. Fortunately for the four keepers, the bombs carried no explosives although they still damaged the structure. The lighthouse was dismantled in 1960.

Abandoned Places: Grand Harbour and Other Lighthouses

[Image by Seth Frantzman used under the linked Creative Commons license.]

Note: The Grand Harbour Lighthouse at Fish Fluke Point in Canada was actually destroyed by storm late in 2013.

The Whiteford Point lighthouse in Wales, built in 1866, is the only cast-iron lighthouse in the UK. Due to almost non-existent shipping in the area by the early 1900s, the lighthouse fell out of use in the 1920s. It was sold for the equivalent of a couple bucks in 2000.

Images by Thomas Guest and used under the above linked agreement.

The Klein Curacao lighthouse was originally built in 1850 and has had to be rebuilt at least twice since then. The small island the lighthouse is located on is currently uninhabited and the lighthouse has begun to fall into ruins despite the fact that it contains an active LED light. The windward side of the island serves a graveyard for ships that failed to benefit from the warning light.

Above photos credited to Mingo Hagen under the same agreement.

As an added bonus, here some photos of the "Ghost Mansion" by Lake Como in Italy.

Photo credit to Fabrizio under the same agreement.

Photo credited to In giro con mama [Flickr/ingiroconmama] under the same agreement.