Lake Havasu landmark restored by volunteers after vandalism incident at Pilot Rock Lighthouse

The Portland Head Lighthouse is more than just an essential aid to boater safety. It is a replica that beautifies the lake. It’s also a memorial to sponsors Shirley and Kemp Richardson, whose ashes are buried beneath.

On a cloudy Thursday in March, Bruce Howe, Steve Parsons and Dan Collier, members of the Lake Havasu Lighthouse Club, gathered at Collier’s home to review how their group of dedicated volunteers restored the lighthouse.

The dangerous working conditions could have caused severe injuries or even death. Workers had to climb the high rock formation and be willing to work on the edge of a steep cliff.

In addition to Howe, Parsons, and Collier, the club’s restoration team included Carl Cornett, Duane Evans, Rocky Hahn, Larry Himebaugh and Dan Roberts.

Collier flew his drone over Pilot Rock to assess the damage to the lighthouse. He was joined by Howe, who had climbed Pilot Rock in the past. They determined that going up from the south side was the best way to approach the summit.

“We had to do it right and make sure nobody got hurt,” Parsons said. “Safety first was on everyone’s minds.”

According to Parsons, they considered using a helicopter to resurrect the new lighthouse. The rotors would have stirred up dust, sand and gravel, making the work even more hazardous, but at the end of the day they scrapped that idea.

Besides, nobody with a helicopter would “touch it.” Instead, the team decided to raise the lighthouse the old-fashioned way—by hand. Parsons got a good rope, climbed up and secured it around a boulder. Everyone used the rope as a guideline to help pull themselves up and drop themselves down.

Coming back down was the hard part because the climbers couldn’t see where they were stepping for the last six feet, so they needed a spotter.

The existing path at the base of the rock formation was only a couple of feet wide through tall scrub bushes, and rattlesnakes occupied them. Taking the path required spreading the bushes apart, which made so much noise that walkers couldn’t hear the rattlers.

They would need to create a wide path. Waiting until late October, when the snakes were hibernating, several boatloads of men armed with metal weedwhackers cleared a level path through the tangled brush wide enough to drag the 130-pound lighthouse up to the rock formation.

“We just went in there and made a gigantic path,” Parsons said. “Because we knew we were going to haul equipment and everything through this path.”

The Lake Havasu Marine Association’s President and CEO, Rick Riegler, came to help, provided boats, and brought Bob Bauer, Mike Tucker and Dawn Hansen.

“We were happy to be in a supportive role,” Riegler said. “The lighthouses provide a navigation function which is vital. We just provided some muscle.”

When the path was finished, the crew demolished and removed the remnants of the original lighthouse.

“We didn’t want to have to deal with cement up top,” Howe explained. “They had these steel straps that were already cemented down so, we removed everything but left those straps.”

The Park Manager of Havasu State Park, Dan Roddy, also coordinated support efforts and sent Senior Park Ranger Tai Harper and others to assist the Lighthouse Club members.

“We were very fortunate,” noted Parsons. “Park Rangers came up and saw us on top of the mountain, and we told them what we were doing. They said, ‘Just toss everything down. We’ll get rid of it.’”

The original lighthouse was about nine feet tall and basically a paper tube covered with fiberglass. The top, or crown, was only secured to the tower with screws, which made it easy for the vandals to rip it off.

“I wanted to get away from all that,” Howe said. “I made the new tower out of aluminum, which is light enough for two people to carry. It’s not going to rust. It’s not going to corrode and break down. It will be there longer than me.”

Howe, nicknamed the Master Builder by the club, spent two weeks building the replacement lighthouse in his garage. He made the new crown using a combination of aluminum and steel so it could be riveted to the aluminum tower. When finished, he primed it and then painted it white.

To transport the lighthouse to the top of Pilot Rock, Howe built a custom wagon to protect the structure and make it easier to pull up the small mountain. The wagon wheels came from wheelchairs he bought from the Veteran’s Thrift Store for $10.00.

On Feb.9, the Park Manager of Cattail Cove State Park, Ron Gayman, dispatched Captain Adam Wiersma and Bill and Betty Noble to transport the new lighthouse from Havasu State Park to the BLM campsite at Pilot Rock. Wiersma piloted a 34-foot Munson Landing Craft with a bow that lowered into a ramp.

The installation was led by the Lighthouse Club members and some of their friends. Riegler and his LHMA volunteers showed up again to lend a hand.

The workers pulled the lighthouse and wagon—which had a combined weight of almost 300 pounds--up to the top with ropes. When they dragged it over a steep ledge, they couldn’t let it slip back down or those nearest the lighthouse would have been pulled over the cliff to their deaths.

Once in place, the lighthouse was anchored by riveting it to the steel straps embedded in the concrete base. About two years after the original was damaged, a dozen workers installed the replacement lighthouse in about four hours.

Collier was amazed that a group of people who had never met each other worked so well together: “And no one got hurt. Not even a scratch.”

“The new lighthouse is about 10-feet tall. The light that shines from the crown is solar-powered with LED beacons,” Howe observed. “The company says that the beacons should last an average of 12 ½ years. We’ve had some of them last 16 years.”

The restored lighthouse, a replica of the Portland Head Lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, will not only aid navigation and boater safety but also beautify Lake Havasu and be an attraction that will inspire visitors to the lake for many years to come. It will require less maintenance and be more durable, too.

These modern-day Nehemiahs from the Lighthouse Club planned the restoration, anticipated the challenges, and devised a strategy that effectively leveraged the available resources.

They did the job right, and no one was hurt. Their shared accomplishment of restoring the lighthouse at Pilot Rock is a testament to the power of community and what can be accomplished when nobody cares who gets the credit.

The Lake Havasu Lighthouse Club is a nonprofit group of independent citizens dedicated to preserving, improving and promoting Lake Havasu.

The mission of the Lighthouse Club is “to provide aids to navigation on the lake, in the form of replicas of famous American lighthouses, to enhance safety for boaters and provide an additional attraction for visitors to the lake.”

The Lighthouse Club has about 40 members—20 of whom are active—and meets on the second Tuesday of each month at the Yacht Club. It welcomes new members. Like many Havasu clubs, it “ goes dark” in the summer months of June, July and August.

“We’re about boater safety. That’s our job. That’s what we do,” Parsons said.

Howe added, “The club is not associated with the city, the Coast Guard or with any official agency.”

No more locations are available where additional lighthouses could be built, so the club focuses on maintaining the 28 lighthouses already in place. The solar batteries that power the beacons must be replaced every three years. If anyone notices that a light is out, the club asks that they please notify them by calling 253-921-3677 or emailing havasulighthouseclub@gmail.com. For more information on the Lighthouse Club, visit the website at www.lh-lighthouseclub.org.