The point was granted as a part of
Rancho El Sur in 1834 by Governor
José Figueroa to
Juan Bautista Alvarado. Point Sur was a notorious hazard to navigation. The 725-ton steamer
USS Ventura was the fastest ship in Goodall, Nelson & Perkins’ fleet; she could do thirteen knots. On Tuesday, April 20, 1875, she set sail from San Francisco with 225 passengers and 500 tons of freight. In dense fog the ship ran onto rocks just north of Point Sur. The ship's commander, Captain George John Fake, was a veteran mariner. He had navigated the route between Monterey and San Francisco for several years. But this was his first trip from Monterey to Southern California. Other ships lost in the area include the S.S.
Los Angeles (originally
USRC Wayanda), which ran aground in 1894, the
Majestic in 1909, the
Shna-Yak in 1916, the
Thomas L. Wand in 1922, the
Babinda in 1923, the
Rhine Maru, the
Panama and the
S. Catania in 1930, and the
Howard Olson in 1956.
John Bautista Henry Cooper, who owned the portion of
Rancho El Sur surrounding
Point Sur, sold to the United States of land on the rocky summit of Point Sur for $5 and the right-of-way for $1,495 (or about $ today) as recorded on November 9, 1889. In 1888,
Joseph Post won a government contract to build the road from the
coastal road his father W.B. Post had built to Point Sur, where the lighthouse would be built.
Lighthouse construction Point Sur Lighthouse opened on August 1, 1889. The station was very remote and was necessarily self-sufficient, as most supplies had to be brought in by ship. Lighthouse employees and their families had their own vegetable gardens. Children stayed with local ranchers during the week to attend school, returning home on weekends, or stayed with distant relatives. In 1927, a schoolteacher was assigned to the lightstation to teach the six children who resided there. When the
two-lane road from Monterey to the Big Sur Village was completed in 1927, children could attend school at a school house on Highway 1. In the 1940s, children from the lightstation were assimilated into Big Sur's larger school. On February 3, 2017, the California Historical Resources Commission nominated Naval Facility Point Sur for the
National Register of Historic Places. It was chosen in part because Point Sur NAVFAC is one of the last remaining Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) facilities, and the only one remaining on the West Coast. == Etymology ==