Fort Point Light, San Francisco, Historic lighthouse beneath Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, United States.

Fort Point Light is an 8.2-meter cast iron tower that sits atop the thick stone walls of the fortress at the entrance to San Francisco Bay. The slender structure rises above the massive walls and creates a striking contrast between the historic fort and the bridge that now towers above it.

The first lighthouse here, a Cape Cod-style structure with an integral tower, was built in 1853 but torn down after three months, before its Paris lens arrived, to clear ground for the Army fort. A squat wooden tower on the ledge between fort and water was lit in 1855 and demolished in 1863 for a larger seawall. The present iron skeleton tower went up on the fort wall in 1864 and was deactivated on September 1, 1934, once the Golden Gate Bridge towers stood 226 m tall.

The lighthouse is part of Fort Point National Historic Site and reflects how important this location was for shipping and coastal defense in the 1800s. Visitors can still sense the daily work that sailors and soldiers once performed to watch over the bay.

Fort Point Light sits on the third tier of Fort Point, directly beneath the south anchorage of the Golden Gate Bridge, at the south end of the narrowest part of the strait. The present tower was in operation from 1864 until 1934, when the bridge towers, 226 m tall, offered a more visible warning to mariners.

The third lighthouse was fitted with a fifth-order lens in 1864, upgraded in 1902 to a fourth-order lens giving alternating white and red flashes. It was deactivated on September 1, 1934, once the 226-metre towers of the Golden Gate Bridge offered mariners a more visible warning.