Featured Destination Story

Guard Island Lighthouse

Ketchikan, AK

The Guard Island Lighthouse is located on a small island near the entrance to the Tongass Narrows, in Clarence Strait in southeastern Alaska. The lighthouse location was prioritized in 1901 to assist shipping along Southeast Alaska's Inside Passage, at the north end of the Tongass Narrows, considered "one of the more difficult passages along the route" of Klondike Gold Rush-related shipping to Juneau and to Skagway.

Construction of the Guard Island Lighthouse began in the summer of 1903 and was completed by September 1904. It included one contributing building, one contributing structure, and one contributing site on a 10.4-acre area. The 34-foot (10 m) wooden tower housed a fourth-order Fresnel lens that produced a fixed white light that was illuminated for the first time on September 15, 1904.