On a chilly, rainy day in January 2018, the Trinidad Memorial Lighthouse was lifted from its home of 68 years on the bluff overlooking Trinidad Harbor and edged its slow way down to the parking lot at the State Beach.
Nearly six years later, on another rainy day, the 74-year-old lighthouse came to rest Friday on a new permanent foundation at the foot of Trinidad Head. The Trinidad Civic Club, which owns the lighthouse, came to an agreement with the Trinidad Rancheria to place the lighthouse and 2-ton bronze fog bell on its harbor property.
The memorial is an exact replica of the original 1871 lighthouse, still in operation on Trinidad Head’s southern cliff. The memorial was built in 1949 at the end of Trinity Street above the harbor to commemorate fisherfolk and other sailors lost at sea.
When city engineers determined in 2017 that the bluff was slipping away under the lighthouse, the iconic memorial needed a new home. It touched down there in a steady rain Friday as a crane deposited the 25-foot-tall, 40,000-pound lighthouse onto its new foundation.
Work will continue on the foundation and to place the original 2-ton bronze fog bell on the new memorial site.