The 1939 Coast Guard station, and a lens built in 1888
The museum occupies the Coast Guard station that was built here in 1939, a five-building complex in the marina district put up to the Nantucket Coast Guard architectural standard. The original structures are on the state's historic register, and walking through the crew quarters is much of the point — this is what a working lifesaving station on this coast actually looked like. The centerpiece is not in the station at all. The Destruction Island lens sits in its own exhibit hall, added in 1998 to hold it. It is a first-order Fresnel lens, roughly eight and a half feet of glass before you count the rotating base, built in France in 1888 by Henry Le Paute to Augustin-Jean Fresnel's design, shipped around to Destruction Island up the coast, and lit in 1891. It ran for over a century. The Coast Guard pulled it in 1995 and it came here. The rest fills in around those two things: a Coast Guard rescue boat, the whale skeleton, and the fishing and shipwreck history of a coast that has plenty of both. The Chamber's members run the boats outside; this is where the story of them is kept.
More things to do in Westport & Grayland
Grays Harbor Lighthouse · Johns River Pioneer Cemetery · North Cove Pioneer Cemetery · Ocosta Cemetery · Point Chehalis · Tokeland Hotel