WINCHESTER BAY, Ore. – Every lighthouse needs a keeper.
Someone to wipe off the Fresnel lens, ensuring that its magnificent colors are unfettered in their reach across the foggy Pacific Ocean; someone to sweep its stairs so tourists can climb up without inhaling dust; someone to wash its windows so visitors may gaze out upon the oceanfront grounds.
At the Umpqua Lighthouse in Winchester Bay, that keeper is Gaylyn Bradley. But she is much more than a custodian, say those who sing her praises. Volunteering up to 70 hours a week, Bradley is a one-woman guardian of history and heritage, of maintenance and progress. She takes care of the lighthouse museum and the grounds visitors walk to get there.
She also has helped transform the lighthouse museum, which will soon triple in size, and she hopes to one day see the construction of a new keeper’s house. She’s done the lion’s share of the work for the expansion by searching for old documents and warming up to old-timers who’ve passed on artifacts from decades ago and relayed stories that will be used to tell the lighthouse’s rich history.
“Without her, we wouldn’t be able to get this accomplished,” said Douglas County Commissioner Dan Van Slyke. “She’s the biggest blessing we have.”
The county recently made her a full-time employee, a gesture she resisted, Van Slyke said.
“We had to argue with her about taking the money,” he said.
Born in Seattle in 1942, Bradley grew up in Eugene and Roseburg after her father, employed by the Bureau of Land Management, was transferred to Oregon. She graduated from Douglas High School in Winston and went to work for the Educational Service District in Roseburg for six years.
After that, she focused on raising her three children. When her husband died, she sold her property in Roseburg and decided to move to the coast in 2000. The lighthouse gig was “a fluke thing,” she says.
“I was bored,” she said. “I was looking for something to do. I heard this was available, so I asked the (county) parks director if I could take it on.”
She started working in October 2002, and her duties have since ballooned.
“We found out she just had this incredible interest and knowledge base, not only for the lighthouse but the river itself,” Van Slyke said. “We started talking to her and the parks director and figured, ‘Hey, we could really take this to a whole other level.’”
As it is, the Umpqua River Lighthouse Museum occupies only the bottom floor of a three-story building. The other floors are empty or used for storage.
Bradley sees changing that. She has worked steadily to become an expert on the area’s history and gather enough exhibits to fill all three floors.
She can explain from memory that the original lighthouse was completed in fall 1857 on the south side of the Umpqua River, near the mouth. Two floods in 1861 and 1863 washed away its foundation, and workmen who were removing some equipment and the lens soon noticed the tower had begun to totter. In December, the Lighthouse Board decommissioned the structure, and it fell into the river two months later.
It took another 30 years of shipwrecks and pleading with the government to secure the funding for a new lighthouse. Finally, in 1894, the current structure was built, its lens shipped from Paris, with 616 hand-crafted glass prisms.
In the 1900s, the U.S. Coast Guard set up shop on the lighthouse grounds, but eventually moved to the north side of the river. The old Coast Guard station was converted into a museum, but barracks were built next door in the late 1970s to house personnel.
Bradley is doing her best to re-create that history, as she continues training volunteers who give tours and staff the museum while keeping the grounds maintained. When things slow down in winter months, she turns her focus to research.
“This is her love, her life, and you can tell it,” said volunteer Virginia Caldwell, a tour guide from Arizona. “She a 110-percenter.”
Eventually, the museum’s exhibits will be broken into decades, showing the history of the area and the Coast Guard during the different eras it existed. On the bottom floor, there’ll be a virtual tour of all the museum’s exhibits on a computer for those who can’t make it up the steep steps.
The county has already allocated $80,000 to the project, and Van Slyke anticipates spending a half-million dollars before it’s finished.
“Every county is always looking for some kind of tourist draw,” Van Slyke said. “We’ve been given a gift. There’s a following; people drive all over the U.S. looking for lighthouses. It’s a matter now of taking the time to do a restoration effort.”
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