Humphreys was appointed keeper of the lighthouse on June 3, 1869. The cold was so severe that frozen fish were hove ashore by the hundreds and birds of all sorts sought refuge in the tower and camp of the workmen where they perished in large numbers.” Aransas Pass Lighthouse was the last principal light along the coast to return to service, doing so in the spring of 1867. Bonzano described a winter storm that hampered the work: “During the progress of the repairs one of the severest Northers ever experienced on the Texas coast occurred. Early in 1867, a work crew arrived to repair the upper portion of the damaged tower at Aransas Pass. Two kegs of powder were exploded inside the tower, damaging the upper twenty-feet of brickwork and destroying most of the circular staircase.Īfter the war, Texas’ lights were gradually repaired or rebuilt and returned to service. Magruder ordered the destruction of the tower. Then, on Christmas Day 1862, Confederate General John B. Control of the tower passed repeatedly between Confederate and Union forces. Sometime after the start of the Civil War, the lens was removed from the lantern room for safekeeping. The light from the tower’s lantern room first illuminated the night sky above the pass later that year. The keeper’s dwelling and the fifty-five-foot, octagonal tower, with a coat of brown paint, were completed by the early part of 1857. During 1856, new bricks arrived at the island, followed later by the lantern room, and finally a fourth-order Fresnel lens. The crew was rescued, but the ship and its cargo were a total loss. The federal government purchased twenty-five acres on Harbor Island, located just inside the pass, and the state of Texas shortly thereafter ceded jurisdiction over the land on June 20, 1855.Ī schooner carrying the bricks for the tower foundered on the sandbar at the entrance to Aransas Pass during high seas in late December 1855. The task of determining which of the lights was most suitable to the area was then turned over to a committee that, perhaps a bit surprisingly, concluded that a brick tower, the most permanent style of lighthouse, should be used. Stevens in Galveston recommended a prefabricated cast-iron tower like those in use at Bolivar Point and on Matagorda Island. Stellwagen visited the area and concluded that a screwpile lighthouse located inside the pass would be most useful on this “coast where there is so much sameness as to make it almost impossible to distinguish one place from another.” Adding another option for the lighthouse, District Inspector Walter H.
Craven of the Coast Survey, while mapping this part of the Texas coast, recommended that a lightship be used to mark the pass, which was known to be slowly creeping south as currents deposited sand on the southern end of Saint Joseph Island and cut away the northern tip of Mustang Island.īefore settling on the type of light to mark Aransas Pass, the Lighthouse Board ordered a second survey of the coast, which occurred in 1853. That same year, Lieutenant Commander T.A.
On March 3, 1851, Congress authorized $12,500 for the construction of Aransas Pass Lighthouse. The pass leads to the port of Corpus Christi some twenty miles or so to the west.
Aransas Pass is one such gap, located between Saint Joseph Island to the north and Mustang Island to the south. The majority of Texas’ 400-mile-long coastline is protected by a necklace of barrier islands and peninsulas, broken only by a few openings or passes that provide access to protected bays and harbors.
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