Aransas Pass Light Station
Port Aransas, Aransas County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Construction of 67-foot tower was started in 1855. The French lens was lighted in 1856, to mark natural Gulf pass to Aransas and Corpus Christi Bays by way of Lydia Ann Channel -- named for the daughter of the first keeper. During Civil War, Confederates (in 1863) buried lens for safety before damaging tower to avert use of light by Federal forces. The auxiliary structures were rebuilt after 1919 hurricane. One of original Texas stations of U.S. Lighthouse Service (merged into the Coast Guard in 1939), this light was decommissioned in 1952 after pass shifted southward. (1973) INCISE ON BASE: Lighthouse not open to public. INCISE ON BACK OF MARKER: Restored in 1972 by Charles C. Butt
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Begun in 1855 and first lit in 1856, this 67-foot tower with its imported French lens marked the natural Gulf pass to Aransas and Corpus Christi Bays. During the Civil War, Confederates buried the lens and damaged the tower in 1863 to keep its light from aiding Federal forces. Rebuilt after the 1919 hurricane, it was finally decommissioned in 1952 once the shifting pass moved south of it.
Why it matters
The Aransas Pass light guided the maritime commerce that built the Texas coast, and its wartime sabotage is a vivid reminder of how even lighthouses became pawns in the Civil War's naval blockade.
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Nearby & related markers
Aransas Pass, C.S.A.
Port Aransas, TX
Aransas Pass, the natural inlet separating San Jose and Mustang Islands, became a strategically vital point along the Texas coast during the Civil War. Early on, Confederate vessels moved cotton and supplies freely through the pass, but a Union blockade soon tightened, and Federal forces under Captain J. W. Kittredge seized control until his capture in 1862. Control seesawed through 1863 and 1864, and after Union forces withdrew, Confederate ships again slipped supplies through the pass to sustain the wartime South.
Site of the Corpus Christi Lighthouse
Corpus Christi, TX
As Corpus Christi worked to become a deepwater port in the late 1850s, the U.S. Lighthouse Service bought this site in 1857 and built a brick lighthouse to guide approaching vessels. The Civil War halted the harbor plans, and Confederate forces turned the tower into a powder magazine — until a band of young Confederate loyalists, fearing Federal capture in 1863, secretly packed a butter churn with gunpowder and tried to blow it up. The blast scorched the tower but spared the powder store; the battered beacon limped on until it was dismantled as a nuisance around 1878.
U.S. Coast Guard on Mustang Island
Port Aransas, TX
To tame the treacherous Aransas Pass, the government established the first Aransas Life Saving Station on Mustang Island in 1878; when the 1919 hurricane destroyed it, successors carried on the work into the modern era. Woodrow Wilson's 1915 merger of the Revenue Cutter and Life Saving services created the U.S. Coast Guard, whose Mustang Island duties expanded from rescue to hunting enemy saboteurs with canine beach patrols in World War II and, later, to escorting military cargo and inspecting vessels in the War on Terror.
Mustang Island
Port Aransas, TX
Mustang Island, one of seven Texas barrier islands, took its name from the wild horses descended from shipwrecks and Spanish expeditions, and was long frequented by the nomadic Karankawas. Robert Ainsworth Mercer settled here in 1855 with his family, founding the El Mar Rancho, but the small community scattered during the Civil War when the USS Arthur blockaded Aransas Pass and shelled the island after settlers fired on Federal sailors in 1862. Ranchers returned after the war, and by the 1920s tourism had become the island's economic mainstay.