The Point Reyes Lifeboat Station: Rescues, Wartime Training, and the Pacific Coast's Only Lifeboat Station With an Intact Marine Railway

Point Reyes juts miles out into the Pacific. Its rocky cliffs catch the prevailing currents and are often hidden in some of the thickest fog on the West Coast — so ships wrecked there often, and the need for a lifesaving station was recognized early in California's history.

The Point Reyes Lifeboat Station landscape: boathouse, officer-in-charge quarters, roads, a Monterey cypress windbreak, water tanks, walls and fences, and the terrain around Drakes Bay. NPS

The first station: an exposed beach, 1890–1927

In January 1888, the U.S. Life-Saving Service bought 3.5 acres on Ten Mile Beach from rancher Charles Webb Howard. The station, built in 1889, began service on July 8, 1890. It stood on the most exposed stretch of the peninsula, about three miles north of the point — a site that always complicated rescues, endangered crews and in the end doomed the station. Even so, in 37 years there its crews helped in 14 major shipwrecks and countless smaller incidents, until the property passed to the U.S. Navy in 1927.

The original Point Reyes Life-Saving Station on Ten Mile Beach, around 1914. NPS / Point Reyes National Seashore, Park Archives

The Drakes Bay station, 1927–1968

In 1927 the U.S. Coast Guard — formed in 1915 by merging the Life-Saving Service with the Revenue Cutter Service — opened a new station, Station No. 313, on the sheltered shore of Drakes Bay near Chimney Rock. Designed by Coast Guard architect Victor Mendelheff for heavy 36-foot motor lifeboats, it had:

• a three-track marine railway to launch the boats;
• a gasoline-powered winch to work the boat carriage;
• dormitory-style crew quarters.

The same year, the officer-in-charge quarters and outbuildings went up about 1,000 feet west, on the hillside above the bay.

The boathouse on Drakes Bay beside the Paladini wharf, with the chief's house behind, around 1928. NPS / Point Reyes National Seashore, Park Archives

The officer-in-charge quarters seen from the west, around 1928. NPS / Point Reyes National Seashore, Park Archives

A remote community

The officer's quarters stood at the edge of pasture owned by Joseph V. Mendoza, an Azorean dairyman. Fishing operations sprang up nearby — the Paladini wharf next to the boathouse and the F.E. Booth wharf below the officer's quarters. Coast Guard crew, ranchers and fishermen formed one community in this remote place, sharing resources and housing.

The station dock and launchway, sometime between 1927 and 1968. NPS / Point Reyes National Seashore, Park Archives

War

Works Progress Administration (WPA) projects reshaped the landscape in the 1930s and 1940s. When World War II broke out in 1941, the Navy took emergency command of the station area, which housed up to 50 men at a time, mostly for military training and coastal beach patrols. Point Reyes hosted training in dive bombing, landing-barge practice and air-sea rescue — and the lifesaving crews were regularly sent out to rescue young trainees who ditched their planes in the ocean, or to recover the bodies of those who didn't survive. Crowding meant crews and trainees often bunked together in houses the guardsmen had built on Mendoza's ranch, or at the Paladini wharf.

The officer-in-charge quarters shortly after WPA work, around 1942. NPS / Point Reyes National Seashore, Park Archives

Routine, and the end

In its 41 years, days at the station were mostly spent maintaining equipment and drilling. In its first decade the crew saved over $3 million in property and assisted 45 vessels, including three major wrecks. After World War II, better maritime technology reduced the need, and the standard 36-foot lifeboat was discontinued in 1956. A new station at Bodega Bay, 20 miles north — with a shipping port, a sheltered cove and room for the new 44-foot boats — gradually took over. In 1968 the Coast Guard decommissioned the station and handed the land to Point Reyes National Seashore, which used it as park housing until it was restored in 1976.

The station in 2019. NPS / PWRO

Preserving the station — and a lifeboat

The 13-acre Point Reyes Lifeboat Station Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985 and made a National Historic Landmark in 1990. The Park Service maintains the station, the officer's quarters and 75 acres of surrounding coastal pasture. After further restoration, it is the only surviving lifeboat station on the Pacific Coast with an intact marine railway.

Crew aboard Motor Lifeboat 36542, sometime between 1953 and 1958. NPS

The park also has one of the station's original boats: 36-foot motor lifeboat CG-36542, built in 1953. It served ten years at Point Reyes, moved to Bodega Bay, and came back to the park in 1982 after the Coast Guard retired it. Thousands of 36-foot motor lifeboats of three models were built between 1908 and 1956; fewer than a dozen survive in the U.S., most as museum pieces. The type was built to stay afloat in rough seas, and was the first standard motor lifeboat the Coast Guard adopted. Restoration of the boat began in 1991, and of the marine railway in 2005.

CG-36542, restored, in the boathouse, 2019. NPS / PWRO

Launch day

On June 18, 2019, park staff and volunteers gathered to launch the restored lifeboat. They hooked a winch to the cradle holding the boat, four "crew members" climbed aboard, and a six-person team took turns pushing it along the flat track inside the boathouse with a manual boxcar mover — a few inches at a time. Once it reached the sloping railway outside, gravity and the boat's own weight eased it into the water. The winch then ran it up and down the rails to break away the kelp that had grown over them in the year since the last launch.

Launching CG-36542, June 18, 2019. NPS / PWRO

The station, now park housing and home to the lifeboat, preserves the story of lifesaving and coastal defense on this part of the West Coast — alongside the park's other maritime, transportation, military and ranching history. More: the lifeboat station's history, shipwrecks at Point Reyes and the Cultural Landscape Inventory report.

Sources

Based on "Remembering Maritime Life: The Point Reyes Lifeboat Station Historic District," National Park Service, Point Reyes National Seashore; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The article's "Works Progress Authority" and "Historic Register of Places" are given their proper names. Rewritten in hubnx's own words.