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Chronology of Aids to Navigation
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1856	Three fog bells were established, all in the vicinity of San Francisco, at Bonita Point, Fort Point, and Alcatraz. (Putnam, p. 126).
1857	(28 December) The light was first illuminated in the Cape Flattery Lighthouse, located on Tatoosh Is land at the entrance to the Straits of Juan de Fuca, Washington. "Because of Indian trouble it was necessary to build a blockhouse on Tatoosh Island before even commencing the construction of the lighthouse. Twenty muskets were stored in the blockhouse, and then the lighthouse work began." (Snow, p. 104).
1857 A 5-inch steam whistle was placed at the Beavertail Lighthouse in Rhode Island but, when not found to be very successful, was replaced by a reed horn and hot—air engine about nine years later. This steam fog whistle was the first installation of this type in the United States. (Putnam, pp. 24, 230).
1857	The U. S. Lighthouse Service obtained its first steam tender, the SHUBRICK, a side-wheel steamer built at the Philadelphia Navy Yard the same year. (Putnam, p. 127).
1858	(27 May) The first lighthouse tender on the Pacific Coast, the SHUBRICK, arrived at San Francisco. (Putnam, p. 127).
1858	A revised form of Lighthouses, Beacons, and Floating Lights of United States was issued by the Lighthouse Board. (Weiss, p. 91).
1859	(3 March) An Act of Congress (11 Stat. L., 423, 424) authorized the Lighthouse Board to use its own discretion in the discontinuance as necessary of such lighthouses as might become useless by reason of changes in commerce, alteration in channels, or other causes. (Weiss, p. 17).
1859	By this date, lenticular apparatus (Fresnel lens) had been installed in practically all the lighthouses of the United States. (Putnam, p. 193).
1860	(15 November) The light in the massive stone Minots Ledge Lighthouse, which was built on the original site of the one lost in 1851, was exhibited. Work on the new lighthouse was commenced in 1855 and finished in 1860. "It ranks, by the engineering difficulties surrounding its erection and by the skill and science shown in the details of its construction, among the chief of the great sea-rock lighthouses of the world." Putnam, pp. 74-75).
1861-1865 During the Civil War, the Lighthouse Establishment assisted the Union cause and its military forces in many ways, such as re-lighting as combat conditions permitted the more important light stations of the 164 that had become discontinued, placing special buoys, lights, and lightships to facilitate military operations, etc. (Weiss, p. 16).
1862 A bill to reorganize the Navy Department was introduced in the Senate, and one of the proposed changes was the transfer of the Lighthouse Establishment to the Navy Department. Subsequently, the Chairman of the Lighthouse Board, himself a Navy Admiral, submitted a* report expressing the Board’s unanimous disapproval of the proposed change. In the end, the bill failed, and the Lighthouse Establishment remained under the Treasury Department.
(Weiss, pp. 16-17).
1864-1867 During this period, lard oil was adopted within the Lighthouse Establishment as the
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5/17/2005