Lydia Ann Lighthouse

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, which provide access to protected bays and harbors. Aransas Pass is one such gap, located between Saint Joseph Island to the north and Mustang Island to the south. The pass leads to the port of Corpus Christi, located twenty miles or so to the west. Aransas Pass Light Station Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard On March 3, 1851, Congress authorized $12,500 for the construction of Aransas Pass Lighthouse. That same year, Lieutenant Commander T.A. 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. Before settling on the type of light to mark Aransas Pass, the Lighthouse Board ordered a second survey of the coast, which occurred in 1853. H.S. 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. Stevens in Galveston recommended a prefabricated cast-iron tower like those in use at Bolivar Point and on Matagorda Island. 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. 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. A schooner carrying the bricks for the tower foundered on the sandbar at the entrance to Aransas Pass during high seas in late December of 1855. The crew was rescued, but the ship and its cargo were a total loss. During 1856, new bricks arrived at the island, followed later by the lantern room, and finally a fourth-order Fresnel lens. 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. The light from the tower’s lantern room first illuminated the night sky above the pass later that year. Sometime after the start of the Civil War, the lens was removed from the lantern room for safekeeping. Control of the tower passed repeatedly between Confederate and Union forces. Then, on Christmas Day of 1862, Confederate General John B. Magruder ordered the destruction of the tower. Two kegs of powder were exploded inside the tower, damaging the upper twenty-feet of brickwork and destroying most of the circular staircase.