Cape Scott Lighthouse, Maritime navigation beacon at northwestern Vancouver Island, Canada
Cape Scott Lighthouse is a white steel skeletal tower standing at the far northwestern tip of Vancouver Island, supported by concrete pillars. The structure sits near a sandy neck passage and continues to serve maritime navigation.
A Danish-Canadian community east of Cape Scott kept a stake light and lantern at the cape until the early 1900s. The first official aid was an unwatched acetylene red lantern on a wooden mast in 1927. During World War II the Royal Canadian Air Force built a radar station here, operational from February 1943 until September 1945. In 1959 a light tower was built on the radar tower's concrete foundation, and the current 9-metre steel tower followed in 1981.
The lighthouse stands on the traditional territory of the Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw, whose villages and resource sites lie along this coast; the Danish-Canadian settlers who farmed east of the cape from 1897 were later arrivals. The site is now within Cape Scott Provincial Park, and the keepers' dwellings remain beside the tower.
The Canadian Coast Guard operates this active lighthouse with resident keepers and has used solar panels instead of diesel generators since 2019. The location is remote and not heavily trafficked, so visitors should expect solitude and self-sufficiency when visiting.
The 1959 light tower was built directly on the concrete foundation of the wartime radar tower, and its diesel generators were housed in the former operator shack. Up to 70 military personnel had staffed the station, supplied weekly by ship and, in emergencies, by parachute drop. A landline ran to Coal Harbour.
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