The Dream Dims : Parks: Lightkeeper Julian Jimenez has lived virtually rent free in the scenic Pt. Fermin Lighthouse for 10 years. But the city wants him out by July 1.

Julian Jimenez may not have the world’s highest-paying or most glamorous job. But for the past decade, he’s enjoyed one of the world’s great fringe benefits.

Jimenez gets to live virtually rent free in a house by the beach.

Not just any beachside house, either, but the Pt. Fermin Lighthouse, a two-story Victorian-style home that sits on a bluff in Pt. Fermin Park in San Pedro--arguably one of the most beautiful coastal locations in Southern California. As a resident park supervisor, Jimenez, 52, lives in the lighthouse full time.

From the windows of the two-bedroom home, or from the captain’s walk on the 50-foot-high light tower that tops the house, Jimenez, a $32,000-a-year maintenance supervisor for the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, gets to enjoy the kind of clean sea air and magnificent ocean views that usually only the very wealthy enjoy.

Unfortunately for Jimenez, however, there are storm clouds gathering on his dream housing horizon. There’s new management in the Department of Recreation and Parks, and they have their own ideas about what to do with the Pt. Fermin Lighthouse. Jimenez isn’t part of the plans. He’s been notified that he has to vacate the premises by July 1.

“(Jimenez) has done a good job,” said David Gonzalez, newly appointed parks department assistant general manager for the Pacific Region, who made the decision to oust Jimenez. “But I’d really like to do something else with the lighthouse.”

Gonzalez said that although plans for the lighthouse are not complete, the parks department might want to open the lighthouse to the public, keeping only a portion as a residence. Or the nearby service building may be used as a residence and the lighthouse itself put to other uses.

Whatever decision is made, Gonzalez stressed that Pt. Fermin Park will continue to have 24-hour resident supervision. Some area residents and park users had expressed concern about the park’s fate if left without full-time supervision.

“We’re simply going to be moving one person out and another person in,” Gonzalez said. “The very last thing I’d think of doing would be taking security out of the area.”

He added that the new resident will probably be from the “recreation” section of the department, as opposed to someone from the “parks” section as is Jimenez.

Living in the Pt. Fermin Lighthouse has been a dream only a relative handful of people have shared over the lighthouse’s 118-year history.

Jimenez, a bachelor, got the job after his predecessor retired 10 years ago. Since then he has kept the park in good shape; unlike many city parks, there is hardly any trash in evidence at Pt. Fermin Park, and any graffiti that appear are quickly covered up.

There are, however, a few drawbacks to life in the lighthouse. Jimenez is on 24-hour, seven-days-a-week call if a maintenance problem arises at the park or at any other park in the department’s Pt. Fermin district. He has to be on the lookout for gang members or others who violate the park curfew or other park rules, and he is constantly battling the graffiti.

In storm season, the wind whipping along the bluff can chill to the bone. And in the spring and summer months, when the weather is warm, the park is swarming with what often seems like millions of screaming, screeching kids.

And to be completely accurate, Jimenez doesn’t live in the lighthouse absolutely free. He has to pay his own utility costs, in addition to a $170 annual fee to the city for living there.

Still, the chance to live in the Pt. Fermin Lighthouse has been a dream come true.

“It’s been wonderful,” Jimenez said. “I never in my wildest dreams ever thought I’d be able to live by the seashore.”

According to Bill Olesen, 88, of San Pedro, a member of a citizens group that helped restore the lighthouse in the 1970s, the first lightkeeper at Pt. Fermin Lighthouse was Mary L. Smith, who took over the $700-a-year federal job when construction of the lighthouse was completed in 1874. How a woman managed to get the job in those unequal-opportunity times is a mystery, Olesen says, but get the job she did. Smith lived in the lighthouse with her sister, Helen, and she was responsible for maintaining the 2,100-candlepower oil-lamp beacon that was visible 13 miles out to sea.

After eight years, however, the Smith sisters apparently decided that life at Pt. Fermin was too lonely, and Mary Smith quit the job.

She was followed by a succession of lightkeepers, one of the most long-lasting of whom was a Capt. George Shaw, who held his position for almost two decades around the turn of the century. In 1925, after a lightkeeper named Capt. Austin died, his daughter, Thelma Austin, took over the job for the next two years, making her the second female lightkeeper in Pt. Fermin history.

In 1927, the city of Los Angeles and the U.S. Commerce Department, which operated the lighthouse, agreed that in return for use of the three-acre parcel of land as a park, the city would maintain the lighthouse and beacon--which after the changeover from oil lamps to electrical power was merely a case of flipping a switch to illuminate the beacon. The lighthouse itself was used as a residence for park supervisors and their families.

Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the U.S. military took over the lighthouse and shut it down as part of the coastal blackout program. The Pt. Fermin Lighthouse was never again used as a beacon.

The lighthouse reverted to city control in 1948. By 1970, it was falling into disrepair. But then the Pt. Fermin Lighthouse Committee, founded by Olesen and others, managed to have it restored to its original condition. In 1972, the lighthouse was entered on the National Register of Historic Places.

Jimenez, meanwhile, says his “heart is broken” at the thought of having to move out of his home of 10 years.

“I had hoped to hang on for another five years, until I retire,” the 25-year veteran of the parks department said. “Now I’ll have to find another place to live. I have no idea what rents are going to be like now.”

Gonzalez said that although he sympathizes with Jimenez, “(Jimenez) has had a good deal for the past 10 years. But everything comes to an end.”

Point Fermin Lighthouse

* The lighthouse began service Dec. 15, 1874.

* The original oil lamp beacon was visible for 13 miles out to sea. It was upgraded in 1898 to an oil vapor lamp with a range of 16 miles. In 1925, it was converted to electrical power with a range 18 miles.

* The lighthouse operation and land was ceded to the City of Los Angeles in 1927.

* Because of the war, the lighthouse was shut down by U.S. military after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December, 1941.

* The lighthouse was entered on National Register of Historic Places in June, 1972.