Construction crews begin $16 million restoration of historic Pigeon Point Lighthouse along the San Mateo Coast

The winds howled and the waves crashed 100 feet below as J.P. Pelletier, a burly union ironworker from Buffalo, New York, inched his way out onto dizzying scaffolding near the top of Pigeon Point Lighthouse, a historic brick landmark that has stood between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz for 153 years.

“You can see the decay on these things,” he said, pointing to ornate black metal first installed when Ulysses S. Grant was president. “This bracket is cracked all the way through. There’s corrosion here, and here and here.