Lighthouses of Texas (Gulf Coast Studies Series, 1)2001

Sending their beams over the coastal waters to guide mariners into harbor, lighthouses form part of the romance of America's past. Here, available again, is the comprehensive story of the lighthouses and lightships of Texas, first told in 1991 by historian T. Lindsay Baker and illustrated with watercolors by noted artist Harold Phenix. After introducing readers to lighthouses and their keepers, Baker provides chapters detailing the surviving Texas lighthouses. These include lights at Brazos Santiago, Point Isabel, Aransas Pass, Matagorda, Halfmoon Reef, Brazos River, Galveston Jetty, Galveston, Bolivar Point, Heald Bank, Sabine Pass, and Sabine Bank. The story of the lighthouses is one with a human face. Readers will meet engineers, inspectors, and the men and women who served as lighthouse keepers on the remote Texas beaches. In a concluding chapter, Baker chronicles the fate of the lights in the mid-twentieth century. A new preface updates the condition of the various lighthouses at the dawn of the twenty-first century.