The point takes its name from Amphitrite, the sea goddess and wife of Poseidon in Greek mythology. It is an apt patron for a place where the Pacific Ocean arrives with little subtlety. The lighthouse stands at the northern entrance to Barkley Sound, roughly 3 kilometres south of downtown Ucluelet and 40 kilometres south of Tofino. It is the only active lighthouse in the Tofino-Ucluelet area accessible by road; the nearest neighbor, on Lennard Island, can only be reached by boat or air. Visitors can walk to it in two or three minutes from the end of Coast Guard Road, or approach along the Lighthouse Loop section of the Wild Pacific Trail, a cliffside path that delivers the full sensory force of the open ocean.

The first lighthouse on Amphitrite Point was a small wooden tower erected in 1906. It lasted eight years. In 1914, the ocean destroyed it. When the Canadian government rebuilt in March 1915, they chose reinforced concrete and a design low enough to present minimal surface area to the westerly storms that barrel in from the open Pacific. The result is a lighthouse that looks more like a bunker than a beacon, its walls thick enough to shrug off the waves and wind that had splintered its predecessor. Canadian Coast Guard keepers staffed the station from 1915 until 1988, when automation made their vigil unnecessary. During those seven decades, the keepers recorded coastal water temperatures that now provide one of the longest continuous climate datasets on Vancouver Island, showing a warming trend of 0.08 degrees Celsius per decade.

Amphitrite Point sits in a tsunami inundation zone, a fact noted on signs along the trail but seemingly insufficient to deter the visitors who come precisely for the violence of the weather. Storm watching has become one of Ucluelet's signature attractions, and the Wild Pacific Trail delivers front-row seats. Between November and March, Pacific storms drive swells that explode against the rocky headland, sending columns of spray skyward. Even in calmer seasons, the oceanic climate keeps the point wrapped in a restless energy, the air heavy with salt and the sound of water working at stone. One photograph of the lighthouse became unexpectedly famous when it was included as a sample desktop wallpaper in Windows 7, introducing millions of computer users to a place most of them will never visit in person.

The lighthouse no longer needs a keeper, but it continues to serve. Its light guides vessels navigating the approaches to Barkley Sound, while the climate data its keepers began collecting over a century ago has taken on new significance. The warming trend those records reveal is consistent with broader patterns of anthropogenic climate change along the British Columbia coast. In a sense, Amphitrite Point has become a witness to two kinds of forces: the ancient, cyclical violence of Pacific storms, and the slower, less visible warming of the waters those storms traverse. The lighthouse endures both, as it was built to do.