South Pass Light
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The South Pass Light, also known as the Port Eads LighthouseSouth Pass Range Lighthouses, also called the "Port Eads Lighthouse". South Point Light, or Gordon's Island Light, are a pair of
lighthouse A lighthouse is a tower, building, or other type of physical structure designed to emit light from a system of lamps and lens (optics), lenses and to serve as a beacon for navigational aid for maritime pilots at sea or on inland waterways. Ligh ...
s located on Gordon's Island at South Pass, in
Plaquemines Parish Plaquemines Parish ( ; ; ; ) is a parish located in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 23,515 at the 2020 census, the parish seat is Pointe à la Hache and the largest community is Belle Chasse. The parish was formed in 1807. ...
,
Louisiana Louisiana ( ; ; ) is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It borders Texas to the west, Arkansas to the north, and Mississippi to the east. Of the 50 U.S. states, it ranks 31st in area and 25 ...
(
USA The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous ...
), one of the primary entrances to the
Mississippi River Delta The Mississippi River Delta is the confluence of the Mississippi River with the Gulf of Mexico in Louisiana, southeastern United States. The river delta is a area of land that stretches from Vermilion Bay on the west, to the Chandeleur Is ...
from the
Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico () is an oceanic basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, mostly surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southw ...
. The light station was established in 1831 and is still active.


History

In 1829, the U.S. Congress appropriated $40,000 for the construction for two lighthouse at South Pass and Southwest Pass, the two principal entrances to the Mississippi River from the Gulf of Mexico. The South Pass light station as built in 1831 consisted of a wooden keeper's dwelling on top of which stood a wooden tower. The government's favored contractor for lighthouse construction at the time, Winslow Lewis, was given $19,150 to erect the structure and the lighthouse at South Pass. He equipped the lights with his patented lamps and reflectors then widely in use in American lighthouses; seven of the lamps and reflectors were located on either side of a revolving chandelier. He chose to build the South Pass Light on Gordon's Island, named after the New Orleans customs collector, Martin Gordon. It was Gordon who persuaded Lewis to abandon his original scheme of driving piles into the marshy ground to secure the foundation in favor of a floating foundation of a cross-hatched grid of squared timbers, a scheme that would ultimately prove fatal with the shifting silty ground below the foundation. Nonetheless, the first keeper, Henry Heistand, lit the lamps for the first time on 15 May 1832. During the first four decades of its existence the light station saw a number of incidents. In 1839, logs floating downriver knocked the keeper's dwelling off its pilings, and in 1841, the entire station was destroyed by a storm. The following year, 1842, its replacement, another wooden tower, arose on the opposite bank of the Mississippi, but within five years it had rotted beyond repair and in 1848 a third tower was completed. This tower, a wooden, octagonal structure, rose some fifty-four feet to a Cape-Cod-style round-domed lantern. Its base disappeared into the center of a dwelling with a steep roof fronted by a porch supported by six wooden columns, reminiscent of the French-Colonial plantation houses common to south Louisiana. The light at South Pass remained good for much of the subsequent decade: Lt.
David Dixon Porter David Dixon Porter (June 8, 1813 – February 13, 1891) was a United States Navy admiral (United States), admiral and a member of one of the most distinguished families in the history of the U.S. Navy. Promoted as the second U.S. Navy officer ...
of the
U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest displacement, at 4.5 million tons in 2021. It has the world's largest aircraft ...
in 1851 reported that it and its companion, the Southwest Pass Light, could be seen twelve miles away. Like most other southern lighthouses, its beacon was extinguished by Confederates at the outbreak of the
American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
in 1861, but was restored the following year by Union forces, who installed a revolving third-order
Fresnel lens A Fresnel lens ( ; ; or ) is a type of composite compact lens (optics), lens which reduces the amount of material required compared to a conventional lens by dividing the lens into a set of concentric annular sections. The simpler Dioptrics, d ...
in the tower, soon afterwards replaced by a fourth-order lens. The lighthouse structure had deteriorated by 1867, and the Lighthouse Board, established in 1852, lobbied the
U.S. Congress The United States Congress is the legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a bicameral legislature, including a lower body, the U.S. House of Representatives, and an upper body, the U.S. Senate. They both ...
for money to build a new tower appropriate for a first-class seacoast light, since the beacon was often the first spotted by overseas navigational traffic from
Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...
and the
West Indies The West Indies is an island subregion of the Americas, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which comprises 13 independent island country, island countries and 19 dependent territory, dependencies in thr ...
. The need for the light's replacement was accelerated in 1876, when
James Buchanan Eads James Buchanan Eads (May 23, 1820 – March 8, 1887) was an American civil engineer and inventor. He held more than 50 patents and was known internationally. He designed and built the Eads Bridge over the Mississippi River in St. Louis, which was ...
began to introduce a wooden jetty system that deepened the river channels at the mouths of the Mississippi and ensured that the shipping lanes did not regularly silt up with sediment deposited from the river flowing downstream. The construction of these jetties received substantial coverage in the national press, including several large engravings of the work in ''
Harper's Weekly ''Harper's Weekly, A Journal of Civilization'' was an American political magazine based in New York City. Published by Harper (publisher), Harper & Brothers from 1857 until 1916, it featured foreign and domestic news, fiction, essays on many su ...
''. Upon their completion, the volume of trade at the Port of
New Orleans New Orleans (commonly known as NOLA or The Big Easy among other nicknames) is a Consolidated city-county, consolidated city-parish located along the Mississippi River in the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 at the 2020 ...
doubled, while Eads received the honor of having the small settlement around the lighthouse named Port Eads after him. Finally, in 1879, Congress appropriated some $50,000 to construct a new tower at South Pass, which used the materials that were originally slated to be used for the Trinity Shoal Light in 1873 before the Lighthouse Board changed its mind and stationed a lightship at the latter location instead. The iron-skeleton tower, 105 feet tall and carrying a first-order Fresnel lens, was located 100 feet southeast of the old tower and first lit on 25 August 1881. In 1900, the tower was painted white with a black lantern so that ships could distinguish it better from its sister tower at Southwest Pass. The first-order lens was replaced by a DCB-224 optic beacon in 1951, and in 1971 the lighthouse was finally automated. The original first-order lens is now on display at the
Louisiana State Museum The Louisiana State Museum (LSM), founded in New Orleans in 1906, is a statewide system of National Historic Landmarks and modern structures across Louisiana, housing thousands of artifacts and works of art reflecting Louisiana's legacy of histori ...
in
Baton Rouge Baton Rouge ( ; , ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Louisiana. It had a population of 227,470 at the 2020 United States census, making it List of municipalities in Louisiana, Louisiana's second-m ...
.Vincent, for U.S. Coast Guard, ibid. The lighthouse was the sole structure at Port Eads to survive
Hurricane Katrina Hurricane Katrina was a powerful, devastating and historic tropical cyclone that caused 1,392 fatalities and damages estimated at $125 billion in late August 2005, particularly in the city of New Orleans and its surrounding area. ...
in August 2005. Ultimately, the Federal government appropriated some $12 million to rebuild and enlarge the marina facilities at Port Eads, which now include docking and refueling premises, bunk rooms with an in-room bath for rent, weigh station, and a small restaurant.


Design

The conical frame for the 1881 tower, consisting of eight inclined iron pillars, holds an elevated, cylindrical utility building pierced at the center by an iron tube that encloses the spiral staircase up to the lantern. Its design resembles many other seacoast towers along the
Gulf Coast The Gulf Coast of the United States, also known as the Gulf South or the South Coast, is the coastline along the Southern United States where they meet the Gulf of Mexico. The coastal states that have a shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico are Tex ...
and
Florida Straits The Straits of Florida, Florida Straits, or Florida Strait () is a strait located south-southeast of the North American mainland, generally accepted to be between the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, and between the Florida Keys (U.S.) ...
(particularly the many offshore lighthouses along the
Florida Keys The Florida Keys are a coral island, coral cay archipelago off the southern coast of Florida, forming the southernmost part of the continental United States. They begin at the southeastern coast of the Florida peninsula, about south of Miami a ...
) such as the Alligator Reef Light, American Shoal Light, Ship Shoal Light,
Fowey Rocks Light Fowey Rocks Light is located seven miles southeast of Cape Florida on Key Biscayne. The lighthouse was completed in 1878, replacing the Cape Florida Light. It was automated on May 7, 1975, and is still in operation. The structure is cast iron, ...
, and
Carysfort Reef Light Carysfort Reef Light is located on Carysfort Reef east of Key Largo, Florida. The lighthouse has an iron-pile foundation with a platform, and a skeletal, octagonal, pyramidal tower, which is painted red. The light was above the water. It was the ...
. As at these other light stations, the iron skeleton frame at South Pass is reinforced by a web of many smaller iron braces that sturdily resist the wind from major storms and simultaneously allow the wind to pass through the structure. The massive lantern was sized as such to accommodate the huge first-order lens originally installed there.


Front range light

In 1886, a small beacon was placed on four wooden piles which established a front range light with the main South Pass Lighthouse acting as the rear. Eventually a wooden tower was built in 1919 that also housed an air
diaphone The diaphone is a noisemaking device best known for its use as a foghorn: It can produce deep, powerful tones, able to carry a long distance. Although they have fallen out of favor, diaphones were also used at some fire stations and in other situ ...
as well as the lens. This structure was replaced in 1947 by a smaller skeletal iron tower (aka South Pass West Jetty Light). It is unknown when the front range was taken down by human or nature, but the jetty it was on has since disappeared into the sand. A small light on pilings now operates in the front light's former location.


Gallery


References


Notes


External links


South Pass Light at Lighthouse Friends
detailed history
Tulane University lantern slide of South Pass Light, ca. 1925-40

Sunset photo of South Pass LightLate afternoon view of South Pass LightArticle on sport fishing at Port Eads with moonlit photo of South Pass Light

US Lighthouse Society day photo of South Pass Light
{{authority control Lighthouses in Louisiana 1831 establishments in the United States Lighthouses completed in 1831 Lighthouses completed in 1842 Lighthouses completed in 1848 Lighthouses completed in 1881 Tourist attractions in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana Transportation buildings and structures in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana