A small lighthouse only 11.6 meters tall, an underwater cliff that could swallow the Eiffel Tower, and a pig that was shot dead over 160 years ago.
Image: Bing Daily Wallpaper · Lime Kiln Lighthouse, San Juan Island, Washington, USA (© Edmund Lowe Photography/Shutterstock) · View original image
Today on Bing's homepage stands a short white lighthouse. It's called Lime Kiln Lighthouse, on the west shore of San Juan Island, Washington State, USA.
First, a fact that makes you do a double take: that seemingly unremarkable stretch of sea in front of this tower is the only place in the world where you can stand on dry land, without boarding a boat, and have a chance of watching orcas swim past right below your feet.
The reason isn't in the tower. It's in the water.
The tower in the picture is smaller than you'd think
The white octagonal tower rises from a square building, perched on a dark brown rocky headland. Behind it stands a conifer forest; ahead lies the open strait.
The tower is only 38 feet—11.6 meters—tall, roughly four stories. The light sits 16.8 meters above the water, yet it's visible from 28 kilometers away.
The square building beneath the tower isn't an annex—it is the tower's foundation. It was originally the fog signal building, housing two oil-fired engine-driven air compressors that fed a three-tone reed foghorn. In fog, it sounded twice every 20 seconds.
The original optic was a fourth-order Fresnel lens assembly: three 60-degree lens panels facing a 180-degree spherical reflector. The entire assembly floated on a layer of mercury, rotating slowly and producing three flashes every 10 seconds. Yes, mercury—that was how lighthouses of the era kept heavy glass turning smoothly and effortlessly.
A pig that cost an archipelago
Why is this tower called "Lime Kiln"? The answer begins with a pig.
On June 15, 1859, American settler Lyman Cutlar found a pig rooting in his potatoes again. He shot it dead. The problem was, the pig belonged to the British Hudson's Bay Company, and both the United States and Britain claimed the island.
Things escalated. At its peak, the American side deployed 461 troops and 14 field cannons on the island; the British sent the 31-gun HMS Tribune and the 84-gun flagship HMS Ganges.
And then? Not a single shot was fired. The two armies occupied opposite ends of the same small island and courteously co-garrisoned it for 12 years. This standoff in which no one died is known in history as the "Pig War."
In 1872, the arbitrator Kaiser Wilhelm I ruled: the boundary would run through Haro Strait. The San Juan Islands went to the United States. And Haro Strait is the very water this lighthouse faces in the photograph—it remains the border between the United States and Canada to this day, with the city of Victoria, Canada, just 12 miles across.
Strangely enough, the very man who fired that shot, Cutlar, began burning lime on the headland to the south the following year. In 1861 he founded the San Juan Lime Company. Workers quarried limestone from slopes sixty to seventy meters above sea level, transported it down on rails, and fired it in kilns at 870 to 1,090 degrees Celsius, driving out the carbon dioxide and leaving quicklime for building mortar. The 1870 census recorded: 13,000 barrels a year, worth $26,000.
The kilns kept burning until the Great Depression of the 1930s shut them down. The lighthouse gets its name from those kilns.
One man, within a single year, indirectly determined which country this lighthouse would belong to—and incidentally gave it its name.
The cliff is underwater
Now for what's in the water.
According to The Whale Museum, at Lime Kiln Point, just 25 feet—7.6 meters—from shore, the seabed plunges to approximately 960 feet, or 293 meters deep.
What does 7.6 meters look like? Two cars lined up bumper to bumper. And 293 meters? Plant the 324-meter Eiffel Tower upside down in there, and the tip would still be about thirty meters below the surface. The lighthouse itself is only 11.6 meters tall—the drop is twenty-five times its own height.
This is the one sentence that explains everything: Deep water runs right along the rock wall, so the orcas chasing salmon run right along the rock wall too.
The deep-water fish highway hugs the rock. Salmon migrate through here; orcas that eat salmon hunt here. They don't need to detour, and people don't need a boat.
In 1983, The Whale Museum obtained use of the lighthouse. In 1985, Lime Kiln Point State Park opened—the first park in the United States created specifically for whale watching—and now draws over 200,000 visitors a year.
What they're waiting for are the J, K, and L matrilineal pods of the Southern Resident killer whales. These orcas eat almost exclusively fish, with a strong preference for the largest Chinook salmon; the transient orcas that share these waters and prey on seals never interbreed with them.
The numbers aren't encouraging. In 1995 the population stood at 98; in 2005 they were listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act; in July 2025, the Center for Whale Research counted 74—J pod with 27, K pod with 14, L pod with 33. Recovery targets are set at 86 by 2030 and 110 by 2050.
The lighthouse changed careers and became an ear
This tower is the last major lighthouse built in Washington State. Construction began in August 1918, and it was first lit on June 30, 1919. Before that, the site had only a brass lens lantern hung on a post, tended by a veteran named George Jakle: kerosene topped off weekly, lens wiped daily.
It was also the last lighthouse in the state to get electricity. Not until 1951, when a submarine cable was laid from Anacortes to the island, did it finally say goodbye to its oil-vapor incandescent lamp. It was automated in August 1962, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, fitted with a modern optic in 1998, and today flashes white once every 10 seconds.
But its real job now is no longer lighting the way.
Inside the tower is a research station. Hydrophone arrays on the seabed listen around the clock and stream the audio live. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has recorded here the faint crunch of orcas crushing fish bones as they feed.
A tower built to keep ships from hitting rocks ended up staying on—to listen for whales passing underwater. It used to watch the road for people; now it keeps count for whales.
Why today
August 7 is National Lighthouse Day in the United States.
The date was chosen deliberately. On August 7, 1789, the First United States Congress passed the ninth act, placing all lighthouses inherited from the colonial era under federal management, and George Washington signed it into law. This was the first public works project undertaken by the newly formed federal government—enacted before Congress even set its own salaries. In 1988, Reagan signed Public Law 100-622, designating this bicentennial date as National Lighthouse Day.
The very first thing a new nation did when it opened for business was light a lamp for strangers at sea.
You can listen right now
This post has an exploration outlet that other days can't offer: you can hear right now what this lighthouse is listening to.
Lime Kiln's hydrophones feed into a citizen science project called Orcasound. Open its live page, choose a listening node, and what you hear is the real-time sound beneath the waters of San Juan Island at that very moment—mostly propeller noise, swells, and rain. But when orcas pass, you'll hear those unforgettable whistles and clicks.
It even welcomes you to report: what you heard and when you heard it. Those records feed into researchers' datasets. In other words, someone on the other side of the globe, eight time zones away, can take a shift watching over these whales.
Put on headphones tonight and give it a try. On the other side of the strait, it's early morning right now.
Sources: Bing Daily Wallpaper, Lighthouse Friends: Lime Kiln Lighthouse, HistoryLink: Lime Kiln and Cattle Point Lighthouses, HistoryLink: Quarrying and Lime Burning on the San Juan Islands, Washington State Parks: Lime Kiln Point State Park History, The Whale Museum SeaSound Remote Sensing Network, Orcasound Live Listening, NOAA Fisheries: Southern Resident Killer Whales, Center for Whale Research Orca Survey, National Park Service: The Pig War, HistoryLink: Cutlar Triggers the Pig War, U.S. Lighthouse Society: National Lighthouse Day