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EM5II & 40-150/2.8
Eldred Rock Lighthouse
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"Hurricane-force winds, estimated at ninety miles per hour, were howling down narrow Lynn Canal as the Clara Nevada started her multi-day journey from Skagway to Seattle. It was February 5th, 1898, near the peak of the Alaskan gold rush, and the three-masted passenger ship was loaded with over 800 pounds of the prized mineral, an illegal shipment of dynamite, and some one hundred passengers, including more than one frustrated fortune seeker. Just over thirty miles into her southward voyage, the ship ran aground at Eldred Rock and exploded in flames.
Eldred Rock Lighthouse in 1951
The remains of the Clara Nevada are now a popular dive site, but oddly no trace of gold has ever been discovered in the wreckage. According to the initial report, all passengers and crew members on board the vessel that evening perished. However, weeks after the accident, a skiff belonging to the ship was found hidden in a grove of trees on the mainland. A few members of the crew likely escaped the disaster that night, as it was later discovered that C.H. Lewis, captain of the Clara Nevada, had resumed his profession on riverboats in Alaska’s interior and that the ship’s fireman was subsequently employed in Nome’s gold fields.
Whether the loss of the Clara Nevada was an accident or an act of sabotage may never be known, but Congress viewed the incident as sufficient evidence that a lighthouse on Eldred Rock was needed."
The lighthouse was opened in 1906.
http://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=828
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