Lighthouses of Texas

Lighthouses of Texas by T. Lindsay Baker. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780890964811.

Sending their beams over the coastal waters to guidemariners into harbor, lighthouses form part of the romanceof Americas past. Here, available again, is thecomprehensive story of the lighthouses and lightships ofTexas, first told in 1991 by historian T. Lindsay Baker andillustrated with watercolors by noted artist Harold Phenix.After introducing readers to lighthouses and their keepersin his first chapter, Baker provides ten more chapters, eachone detailing a surviving Texas lighthouse and itsconstruction, navigational service, and historical role.These include lights at Brazos Santiago, Point Isabel, AransasPass, Matagorda, Halfmoon Reef, Brazos River, Galveston Jetty,Galveston, Bolivar Point, Heald Bank, Sabine Pass, and SabineBank.The story of the lighthouses is one with a human face.Readers will meet the engineers who built the lights and theinspectors who ensured their efficacy. Men and occasionallywomen—usually alone, sometimes accompanied by family or acrew—served as lighthouse keepers on the remote Texasbeaches.In a concluding chapter, Baker chronicles the fate of thelights in the mid-twentieth century. A new preface updatesthe condition of the various lighthouses at the dawn of thetwenty-first century.About theT. Lindsay Baker,award-winning author of many books, isdirector of the Texas Heritage Museum at Hill Country Collegein Hillsboro, Texas. Harold Phenix makes his home in Hunt, Texas, and continuesto paint.