The Lighthouse Keeper of Point Reyes

For twenty-three years, the lighthouse at Point Reyes, California, cast its beam across the Pacific — until 1975, when the Coast Guard automated the light and the keeper's cottage went dark. Within months, ships reported the beam growing unreliable. Salt corroded the unmaintained lens. Fog signals failed. Fishermen along the Marin coast, who had depended on that steady flash for generations, found themselves navigating blind through notorious waters.…