An Interview with the Last Lighthouse Keeper on the Point
Twenty-nine years tending a light that is now fully automated.
He kept the light for twenty-nine years by hand, then for six more after it no longer needed him, out of something closer to loyalty than duty.
The light was automated in the late nineties, which technically ended the need for a keeper. He stayed on anyway, in an advisory capacity nobody quite defined, until the agency finally closed the position for good.
Asked what the job actually was in those last six years, he laughed and said mostly it was making sure the automation was not lying to the mainland about whether the light was working.
He still drives out to the point most weeks, though the door is locked to him now. He says he just likes to check that it is still doing what he spent half his life doing for it.
