Built in the late 1800s as America’s most expensive lighthouse, the St. George Reef Lighthouse has deteriorated in isolation over the decades. A helicopter is the only safe way to access it.

Preservationists have worked for decades to restore this beacon, but steep costs and extreme weather pose monumental challenges.

CRESCENT CITY, Calif. — John Gibbons shivered in the back of the little boat hauling him to his first assignment as a member of the U.S. Coast Guard.

It was 1953. Gibbons was a baby-faced 18-year-old kid from Ohio who had only recently seen the ocean for the first time. And he had fresh orders to get to work at one of the country’s most isolated — and most dangerous — lighthouses.

The St. George Reef Lighthouse, six miles off the coast of California’s sparsely populate

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