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Looking out over the Pacific during a bout of recent tumultuous weather, I can’t help but imagine the voyagers, including my great grandparents, who’ve crossed oceans in search of new homeland. For them, seeing a flash of light from a bluff’s beacon translated into a new beginning. Yet often, this same light of hope cast fright among the crew when, tethered to a gale’s whim, the lamp’s increasing glow suggested, not safe harbor, but cataclysmic surf against stubborn rock. Since the Cape Disappointment Lighthouse was erected in Ilwaco in 1856, Washington’s beacons have witnessed the invitation and volatility of the sea.

Originally a reflected fire of coal and wood, the lights upgraded to whale oil, then kerosene to maintain their 24-hour shine. Today, most radiant lighthouses rely on solar panels to energize the light source, which typically beams more than 15-miles out to sea.

Though navigational technology all but eliminates their necessity and lighthouse keepers no longer dwell in their mythic cottages, 27 lighthouses remain on the bluffs and shores of Washington overlooking Puget Sound, Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean. Not all of the structures stand as postcard perfect as the Admiralty Head Lighthouse at Fort Casey State Park, a three story, white-washed beacon attached to a Spanish style house, but the majority would fair well against any of New England’s storied, lambent sentries.

Local lighthouse lovers are fortunate to live adjacent to not one, but two seas, and Puget Sound gathers some of our finest luminous stewards, such as the Point Robinson Lighthouse that resides on Maury Island before Puget Sound and, on many days, Moumt Rainier. But Point Robinson is hardly the only ideal lighthouse on the Sound, as visitors to the Mukilteo and Alki lighthouses will attest. Whether on ocean, strait or sound, the architecture, though similar in many ways, is distinct enough to create wonderful debates about just which lighthouse is Washington’s prettiest.

“The Stuart Island [Turn Point] Lighthouse is my favorite,” says Gaylene Meyer, a Seattle native. “It’s just so lovely and quiet.”

Like Meyer, most visitors are drawn to the curious stillness that emanates from the lighthouse—a calm rooted, perhaps, in the beacon's fortitude required to withstand the ocean's moodiest and mightiest tantrums.

Over 2,000 vessels and more than 1,000 lives have been lost along the Washington coast in just over two centuries, yet no one can accuse a lighthouse of ever wavering. Built to withstand whatever the sea throws its way, few compare to North Head Lighthouse (pictured above), firmly planted in one of the windiest locations in the U.S., where 100 mph winds are not uncommon. Today, guests may stay in the keeper’s dwellings, built slightly inland behind a windscreen of trees.

Several dozen lighthouses throughout the U.S. offer accommodations in their quarters, but few experiences match those for New Dungeness Lighthouse’s “Keeper for a Week” program, where association members have physically maintained the lighthouse everyday for the past 15 years.

The lighthouse’s grasp upon our imagination never burns out. As children we pretend we’re Laura Ingalls of the Pacific Northwest, sequestered on Patos Island, 26-miles over water from Bellingham. Our adult fantasies dwell within that simple, bleached cottage. As we ascend the circular steps each day to clean the Fresnel lens, emails, text messages and other modern beacons of communication disappear ever deeper within the mainland’s shadows far, far away.