The best-known lighthouses in California
Ordered by how much has been written about each place. The numbers match the map.
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San Francisco has a set within 11 km: Alcatraz Island Lighthouse (1909), Point Bonita Lighthouse (1877), Mile Rocks Lighthouse and Lime Point. Down the coast, Point Montara Light Station is 9 km from Pacifica, Point Pinos Lighthouse 2 km from Pacific Grove, Point Conception Light 21 km from Lompoc. In the south, Point Fermin Lighthouse (1874) stands at 50 meters near Rancho Palos Verdes, and Old Point Loma Lighthouse (1855) is 6 km from Coronado.
California's list is 45 named lighthouses RLQuest knows, 22 of them with a Wikipedia article. For scale, the state's waterfalls page lists 351 places and the ruins page 61. A lighthouse quest here usually means a headland walk with the Pacific on one side; the app records it, confirms the arrival, and the bluff tiles are yours on the map from then on.
Every dot is a place. The numbers mark the highlights listed below.
Ordered by how much has been written about each place. The numbers match the map.
A selection, best known first, with the nearest larger town next to each.
RLQuest knows these places too. Which means:
Some of your daily quests lead to a real place near you. The app uses your location to check you were really there.
If you're the first person in RLQuest to complete a quest at a place, it's your first find. The Place Book shows you which kinds of place you're still missing.
Every walk uncovers tiles, each about 350 m across. Over time you can see which corners you know well, and where you've never set foot.
Place data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License. Borders: geoBoundaries (CC BY 4.0); Canada: Statistics Canada. As of 2026-10-02. The list shows the places RLQuest knows and isn't complete. Photos come from Wikimedia Commons; author and license are credited on each photo.
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