Life-Saving Cemetery
I was driving out the long road to the Point Reyes Lighthouse, when I came upon a sign pointing down a farm road: “Historic Life-Saving Station Cemetery”. I had no idea in the world what that could mean, but how could I resist? Not very many bumps and potholes later I found an amazing little piece of history - a kind of “boot hill” site that turned out to be another unexpected highlight of my daytrip to Point Reyes National Seashore.
“IN A WINDBLOWN cemetery on the Point Reyes Peninsula, the bodies of four young surfmen, as members of the little-known U.S. Life Saving Service were called, lay buried for more than a century before the National Park Service and the Coast Guard discovered them. For the fifth Memorial Day, those first surfmen and the generations that followed them will be remembered in a convocation on Monday morning at the little cemetery near the Point Reyes Lifeboat Station at Chimney Rock. They will be honored for the lives they saved in the treacherous ocean along the Marin County coast, sometimes at the cost of their own.
The surfmen had the most daunting motto of all the services: ‘Ye have to go out but ye don't have to come in.’
Between 1871 and 1915 surfmen saved the lives of 178,000 people nationwide.”
From an article in the Marin Independent Journal, 5/25/2014 by Paul Liberatore
www.marinij.com/general-news/20140525/a-memorial-day-serv...
Life-Saving Cemetery
I was driving out the long road to the Point Reyes Lighthouse, when I came upon a sign pointing down a farm road: “Historic Life-Saving Station Cemetery”. I had no idea in the world what that could mean, but how could I resist? Not very many bumps and potholes later I found an amazing little piece of history - a kind of “boot hill” site that turned out to be another unexpected highlight of my daytrip to Point Reyes National Seashore.
“IN A WINDBLOWN cemetery on the Point Reyes Peninsula, the bodies of four young surfmen, as members of the little-known U.S. Life Saving Service were called, lay buried for more than a century before the National Park Service and the Coast Guard discovered them. For the fifth Memorial Day, those first surfmen and the generations that followed them will be remembered in a convocation on Monday morning at the little cemetery near the Point Reyes Lifeboat Station at Chimney Rock. They will be honored for the lives they saved in the treacherous ocean along the Marin County coast, sometimes at the cost of their own.
The surfmen had the most daunting motto of all the services: ‘Ye have to go out but ye don't have to come in.’
Between 1871 and 1915 surfmen saved the lives of 178,000 people nationwide.”
From an article in the Marin Independent Journal, 5/25/2014 by Paul Liberatore
www.marinij.com/general-news/20140525/a-memorial-day-serv...