RICHMOND — For more than 150 years, the East Brother Light Station has been a constant fixture on Richmond’s shoreline, doubling as a warning system and novel bed and breakfast for decades. Part of that fixture is now in jeopardy.

Under threat of potential closure, a local nonprofit is trying to raise money for repairs to keep the historic site open to visitors.

The East Brother Light Station has operated as a light house and fog signal since it was built in 1873 just off of Richmond’s Point San Pablo, where the San Francisco and San Pablo bays meet.

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The five-bedroom Victorian-style light station has also functioned as an inn since 1980, after the U.S. Coast Guard, which owns the property, licensed a nonprofit, also named East Brother Light Station, to oversee the historic site.

“Cities that preserve their historic resources tend to be successful and attract new residents and businesses and tourists,” Former Mayor Tom Butt said about some of the motivations to save the light station. “People really appreciate it because it’s so different. It’s right in the middle of an urban area with 12 million people within an hour drive. You can go out there and be in a different world for a day and a night.”

Since becoming stewards of the light station, a job that’s passed through a long line of hands, the nonprofit has invested a substantial amount of labor and money into renovating and maintaining the property, said Butt, who was a founding member of the nonprofit and also serves as its board president.

The latest and most urgent need is an effort to replace the pier and gangway on the island, which was built in 1962, repaired in the 1990s and has again begun to crumble and rust away due to exposure to the elements.

The Coast Guard doesn’t have the funds for renovations, Butt said, prompting the nonprofit’s latest bid to raise $750,000 for the project. The first $51,000 raised will go toward purchasing a prefabricated gangway made of aluminum, Butt said. Just more than $18,000 has been raised since the fundraiser was announced July 23, according to GoFundMe.

Completing the latest round of repairs is vital, Butt said. If not completed and the pier and gangway further deteriorate to unsafe levels, the inn could be shut down by the Coast Guard, he said.

“Without use of the pier and gangway, occupation of East Brother Island would cease, the bed and breakfast inn would close, and the stream of funding critical for maintenance would quickly dry up. The buildings would soon be destroyed by neglect, vandalism and weather,” Butt said in the fundraiser campaign announcement.

The Coast Guard had long planned to do away with the light station altogether, having announced plans to demolish the structures on the island to erect an automatic light on a steel or concrete tower in the 1960s, according to the book “East Brother: History of an Island Light Station,” by Frank Perry.

A successful push to add the site to the National Register of Historic Places saved the light station from demolition in 1971. Shortly after, the East Brother Light Station began renovating and maintaining the property using revenue from the bed and breakfast, which opened in 1980, and public and philanthropic dollars.

Thankful for that preservation work is Martin Reimer, a long-time lighthouse enthusiast and East Brother Light Station volunteer.

The volunteer team, known as “wickies,” travel to the island once a month to paint, pull weeds, clean windows and complete any other maintenance jobs the innkeepers haven’t been able to get to amid their busy schedules of cooking, cleaning, leading tours of the property, answering phone calls and emails and traveling into town to gather supplies.

“It’s important to remember that there is history here in Richmond,” Reimer said. “If more people knew about (the light station), more would like to come and visit. It’s not all bad in Richmond. There’s good parts too.”

The most frequent users of the pier and gangway are the current innkeepers Danielle La Vigne and Rachel Colvin. The couple crosses the island’s access point at least four times a day transporting visitors and running errands to and from the island.

As the guest-facing arm of the business, they’re also responsible for soothing any safety concerns visitors may have and letting people down gently when their physical abilities may prevent them from climbing the ladder from the boat onto the pier.

La Vigne and Colvin’s own troubles with the station’s infrastructure started before the pair had even been offered the job. The night before they were meant to tour the property for the first time, the lift that pulls the boat out of the often choppy water broke during a storm.

The pier and gangway project is only one on a wish-list of improvements the innkeepers would like to see completed. Also on the list is a second guest dock on the northwestern side of the island and a new boat. More youth programming, historic education opportunities for the public and collaborations with other community groups would also help make the work more rewarding, Colvin and La Vigne said.

Those opportunities could also diversify incoming revenue, and help keep “the place here another 150 years … and make it a little more livable for the next innkeepers,” Colvin said.

“It’s a lot of missed opportunities to do so much more with this place,” La Vigne said. “It’s still an active lighthouse. It’s also a museum. And there are a lot of educational opportunities.”

Maintaining a historic site like the East Brother Light Station comes with a never-ending list of repairs, and the innkeepers’ jobs are hard, Butt emphasized. He has his own list of future projects but getting there first requires addressing the pier and gangway.

“There’s a huge amount of work. It’s ongoing, constantly,” Butt said. “You got to stay after it.”

Visit ebls.org to learn more about the East Brother Light Station and how to support the preservation of the historic site.

Volunteers clean the grounds of the East Brother Light Station on Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025, near Richmond, Calif. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)