The Old Lighthouse “Faro Viejo” is located on top of a sand dune where the geographical limit of the 2 coasts of the Baja California Peninsula was established; the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of California. For navigators it is also known as “Cabo Falso”(Fake Cape), because at a time it was believed that it was the southern point of the peninsula or also because it gave the impression that turning at this cape you would enter the bay of Cabo San Lucas, when in reality it was needed to navigate to the east until turning in to the other cape. The Faro Viejo, was built with a modest exhibit of neoclassic style, influenced by the Industrial Revolution, by the inclusion of steel in different parts of the property, as well as materials of riverbed rock and set in a foundation of lime-sand and red annealed brick in walls; all this to support the weight and, live and dead loads of the ceiling and the inevitable exposure of constant hurricanes or storms that annually threaten this area.
The luminous reach of the Lighthouse, was of 10 nautical miles with spinning flashes of white light and a frequency of 4 seconds, running on diesel fuel and would be lit at sundown and put out at sunup. During storms it was lit 24 hours up until the storms passed. It also had an underground cistern which was filled with rain water, in this way there was a small spring in its surroundings that during the rain of some of the months of the year, provided “potable water” to the lighthouse keepers, and there was no landing because it was located on the open waters of the Pacific Ocean, where the waves are very strong. With time the Faro Viejo originated a very singular new class of public officials (lighthouse keepers) on the peninsula, which were persons with professional interest and normal special circumstances of solitude and isolation, made them true martyrs to the service of international navigation, because the distance to the closest postal site was 8 kms. from Cabo San Lucas.
Because of the deterioration from time, weather, non-usage and abandonment; Pueblo Bonito Group, through the Letty Coppel Foundation, has begun its rescue and rehabilitation with its own resources, and once reconstructed and finished shall be the Faro Viejo Museum, dedicated to extol the importance of maritime navigation of which the lighthouse has historically been a guide and guardian and shall show the visiting public allusive artifacts of navigation through the seas, as well as a room with ancient maps of the Californias and temporary and permanent artistic displays.