Like all the books in the Arcadia series, it is illustrated with some 200 historic photographs accompanied by deeply informative captions.  Together they detail our coastal history from its rocky, foggy  beginnings to the present.  They cover the perils and personalities of early seafaring, the numerous wrecks along our treacherous shores, the siting and building of lighthouses and their equipping, and the lonely lives of the families that staffed them. It also touches on other aspects of coastal safety such as the wartime Coast Guard patrols.

        For a community whose development was initially based on maritime transportation, this subject is historically vital and continues to be so now that the old lighthouses are now largely tourist attractions or the goal of a Sunday trek to the ruins of the Punta Gorda lighthouse, an open house at the Trinidad light or the memories of the hippy colony at Lighthouse Ranch.

        Altogether, this is an enlightening look at Humboldt's coastal history.