Piedras Blancas lighthouse tours are back after COVID closure. Here’s how you can visit
At Piedras Blancas Light Station north of San Simeon, things seemed almost back to normal on Feb. 13 — despite COVID-19 restrictions and the closure of Highway 1 near Big Sur due to a mudslide.
Thirty members of the public explored the lighthouse site, located about six miles north of Hearst Castle, that morning as the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) launched a truncated tour schedule about 11 months after the lighthouse closed for scheduled tours due to coronavirus precautions.
COVID-19 precautions change lighthouse tours
The Piedras Blancas Light Station tour experience now is somewhat different than it was before the COVID-19 closure, and more restricted than it likely will be once pandemic restrictions are completely lifted, according to Ryan Cooper, BLM light station manager.
For now, the agency will offer only one tour a week, on Saturday mornings.
Cooper said via phone that he hopes “as we go along and figure everything else, we can start to expand, adding a weekday tour, adding some other numbers on Saturday.”
Reservations are required to tour the scenic, 20-acre promontory, and can be made at www.recreation.gov/ticket/facility/252948. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for ages 6 to 17, plus a $1 reservation fee per ticket. Directions and instructions are on the website.
Before the tour, ticketholders gather at the old Piedras Blancas Motel, 1.5 miles north of the light station. They’re then escorted down the highway, through a short stretch of the surrounding ranchland and then onto the high, windswept point that provides sweeping 360-degree views of the circa-1875 lighthouse tower and other buildings as well as the Pacific Ocean, the shore and the Santa Lucia ridge.
“We’ll give them a short history and then turn everybody loose with our new brochure about the light station,” Cooper said.
There’s a half-mile trail along which visitors can wander during the tour. “The doors to the buildings will be open,” he said, “but people can only go up to the doorways, not inside,” due to COVID-19 precautions.
Masks and other face coverings must be worn at all times while at the light station. And while docents will be available to answer questions, the tours are mostly self-guided and totally outdoors.
Attendees are encouraged to bring their own binoculars, to enhance their views of nearby elephant seals, peregrine falcons and other wildlife, as well as the light station’s spectacular surroundings.
“We’re excited to have everybody back, to welcome them here,” Cooper said, and allow the public to take a step back in time to when the First Order Fresnel lens atop the lighthouse guided mariners away from rugged rocks nearby in the sea.
On the last day of 1948, an earthquake so severely damaged the upper part of the lighthouse, including the lantern room that held the lens, that the upper three levels of the stately structure had to be removed.
That section is currently on display alongside Cambria’s Main Street. After many decades of care by the Cambria Lions Club, the U.S. Coast Guard is in the midst of determining the future of the lens.
BLM manages the light station and the surrounding 456-acre Piedras Blancas Historic Light Station Outstanding Natural Area as a historic park and wildlife sanctuary.
