The Point Arena Lighthouse stands sentinel on the Northern California Coast, south of Mendocino, during a winter storm. After the original Point Arena Lighthouse was damaged in the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake the United States Lighthouse Service contracted with a San Francisco based company that built factory smokestacks to build a replacement. The new Point Arena Lighthouse began operation in 1908 and was the first lighthouse to be built with steel reinforcement rods encased in concrete to help it withstand an earthquake.