Efforts are underway to save one of the few remaining historic lighthouses along the Louisiana coast. For the past 170 years, the brick Sabine Pass Lighthouse has stood tall above the entrance to the Sabine River, which separates southern Louisiana from Texas. Construction started on the coastal lighthouse in 1854 and it was lit in 1857.
REsilience of the Sabine Pass Lighthouse
Andy Tingler, president of the Cameron Preservation Alliance, is leading efforts to restore the old lighthouse. Tingler, who grew up in the area, takes me to the lighthouse, located in a marshy area near the Sabine River. “It’s weathered many hurricanes. It has a lot of issues from those hurricanes and just general neglect,” Tingler explained. “It has been deactivated since 1952, and it’s been abandoned since then.”
a sturdy design
The Sabine Pass Lighthouse has survived some of Louisiana’s fiercest hurricanes over the past century and a half. Its unique design features brick supports that fan out near the bottom of the structure. “This is the only one in the country that’s built like this with buttresses,” Tingler notes. The extra support was added to this tower because of other failed lighthouses in the soft ground of the Mississippi River delta.
lighthouse pictures from the past
A picture taken just after a powerful 1886 hurricane shows that the light keeper’s house was destroyed. Four people rode out the hurricane in the Lighthouse Tower.
A picture postcard from about 1900 shows the new light keeper’s house.
Black horizontal stripes were painting on the white lighthouse in the 1930s to make it easier for ships to see the tower.
And this picture shows how the buildings looked when the lighthouse was decommissioned in the 1950s. The Keeper’s house and other buildings were destroyed in a 1970s fire. Only the brick foundations remain today.
sabine pass lighthouse featured on tv
preserving a unique structure
There are few lighthouses remaining in coastal Louisiana. Tingler explains that the state was once home to between two dozen and three dozen historical lighthouses. “Now we’re just down to a handful,” he says. Stepping inside the Sabine Pass Lighthouse, we gaze up to the 75-foot top of the round brick tower.
The structure’s five-foot-thick brick walls were once lined with circular steps that were used to climb to the tower light. But those cast-iron steps, and the large center post that supported them, have rusted away.
The iron steps, 90 of them, are being recast at a cost of more than a thousand dollars each. Total restoration will cost several million dollars. The Cameron Preservation Alliance continues trying to raise the needed funds to save the lighthouse. “It is what makes a place unique,” Tingler explains. “And once it’s lost, it’s never coming back.”
visiting the historic lighthouse
The Sabine Pass Lighthouse remains an impressive structure in the southwestern corner of Louisiana. It is a building with a stormy past that now has a chance at a brighter future. To visit the lighthouse, you must first check in at the visitors’ entrance at Chenier Energy. The access road crosses the company’s property along the Sabine River. You will need to contact the Cameron Parish Library Branch at Johnson Bayou a day ahead of time to get on the visitors’ list. Call the library at (337) 569-2892. Monday-Thursday 9am-5pm. Friday 8am-4pm.
getting there
The visitor entrance at the Cheniere LNG Terminal is located on the south side of La Hwy 82 about 1 mile east of the Sabine River in Cameron, LA.
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