[7] Atop the lighthouse spins a third-order Fresnel lens with four panels containing 90 lead glass prisms and weighing 6800 pounds, constructed by Chance Brothers, an English company, and shipped to Point Cabrillo around Cape Horn.

It was originally lit by a kerosene lamp and turned by a clockwork mechanism which was replaced by an electric light and motor in 1935.

The opium-trading brig Frolic wrecked on a reef north of Point Cabrillo in 1850; the investigation of the wreck by agents of Henry Meiggs led to the discovery of the coast redwood forests of the Mendocino area and the beginning of the timber trade that would drive the local economy for decades.

The Coast Guard manned the station until 1973, when the lens was covered and a modern rotating beacon was mounted on a metal stand on the roof west of the lantern room.

Beginning in 1996, the NCIA organized a major restoration of the station to the state it would have been in the 1930s, after it was electrified, including a return to active duty of the main lens of the light.

[4] The restored lighthouse was opened to the public in August 2001, and appeared in the Warner Bros. 2001 drama film The Majestic.

The NCIA then became the Point Cabrillo Light Keeper Association,[9] which continues to run the station for the state park system.