Tourism is the top industry in the southern Oregon coastal city of Bandon, but a century ago, maritime shipping was king. Bandon was the main port between San Francisco and Portland, and in aid of that enterprise, the Coquille River Lighthouse was erected in 1896 on a rocky edge of what is now Bullards Beach State Park. Until it was decommissioned in 1939, the station’s beacon guided thousands of ships safely from the Pacific Ocean to the busy harbor. On a recent cloudy afternoon, retired teacher and Bandon resident Rick Morris blinked hard while staring at the forlorn, 40-foot-tall octagonal tower, the city’s most famous landmark. One of nine surviving, federally funded lighthouses in the state, the Coquille River Light station needs repairs but is not endangered as is the battered, privately owned “Terrible Tilly” Tillamook Rock Lighthouse, overrun by 2,000-pound Steller sea lions and on Lighthouse Digest Magazine’s national “doomsday” list. “A charming little lighthouse that has b...