Tree Point Lighthouse

Tree Point History

Tree Point seems a fitting name for almost any protuberance along the coast of Southeast Alaska, as most of this area is part of Tongass National Forest, a temperate rain forest. There are, however, several gnarled, dead trees clearly evident in photographs taken of Tree Point throughout the twentieth century, which makes one wonder if perhaps these white, weathered giants were once used as a navigational reference and gave rise to the point’s name. Although this theory on the origin of the point’s name makes a good story, more likely than not the dead trees are simply byproducts of logging.

A couple of reasons convinced coastal surveyors that Tree Point was a prime spot for navigational aids. First, there is a straight route from Tree Point to the open Pacific Ocean via Dixon Entrance, and second, Tree Point, situated just seven miles north of the Canadian border, is located along the Inside Passage roughly midway between the two largest cities in the area: Ketchikan, Alaska and Prince Rupert, British Columbia.Atop the tower stood a helical-bar lantern room that housed a fixed, fourth-order Fresnel lens, manufactured in Paris by Henry-LePaute. The focal plane of the lens was forty-two feet above the island, and eighty-two feet about the surrounding water at high tide.