Cape Flattery Lighthouse - Washington

The Cape Flattery Lighthouse, built in 1857, is located on Tatoosh Island, WA. This eighteen acre island is sacred to the Makah Nation and is forbidden territory. I took the picture, shown below, from an observation deck on the edge of the United States. For anyone standing on that deck, only the Tatoosh Island stands between them and Asia. (Click on the map and the picture for an enlarged view.)

At the time of my visit here in 1999, Cape Flattery was one of the oldest, still standing, active, automated and unmanned lighthouses on the west coast. It is also the most northwest point in the continuous U.S. Because the island sets several hundred yards offshore, I used a telephoto lens with a 2X coupler on my camera. My picture does not do justice to the beauty of the surrounding waves and the vastness of the ocean's presence I experienced that day.

To reach the aforementioned observation deck to see this lighthouse, one must walk a cedar boardwalk trail which is on the Makah Indian Reservation. The trail provided a route through a half-mile of Washington coastal forest to the edge of the U.S.