Sabine Pass is the natural outlet of

Sabine Lake Sabine Lake is a bay on the Gulf coasts of Texas and Louisiana, located approximately east of Houston and west of Baton Rouge, adjoining the city of Port Arthur. The lake is formed by the confluence of the Neches and Sabine Rivers and connec ...

into the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...

. It borders

Jefferson County, Texas Jefferson County is a county in the Coastal Plain or Gulf Prairie region of Southeast Texas. The Neches River forms its northeast boundary. As of the 2020 census, the population was 256,526. The county seat is Beaumont. Jefferson County has t ...

, and

Cameron Parish, Louisiana Cameron Parish (french: Paroisse de Cameron) is a parish in the southwest corner of the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 5,617. The parish seat is Cameron. Although it is the largest parish by area in Louisia ...

History

Civil War

Two major battles occurred here during the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

, known as the

First First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...

and

Second The second (symbol: s) is the unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds ...

Battles of Sabine Pass.

Spanish-American War

In May 1898, the

55th United States Congress The 55th United States Congress was a meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It met in Washington, DC from March 4, 1897, to M ...

authorized the establishment of two seacoast defense forts at Sabine Pass relative to the

Texas Gulf Coast Texas Gulf Coast is an intertidal zone which borders the coastal region of South Texas, Southeast Texas, and the Texas Coastal Bend. The Texas coastal geography boundaries the Gulf of Mexico encompassing a geographical distance relative bearing ...

. The

fortification A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''facere'' ...

s were a response as

hostilities War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...

intensified in the

during the

Cuban War of Independence The Cuban War of Independence (), fought from 1895 to 1898, was the last of three liberation wars that Cuba fought against Spain, the other two being the Ten Years' War (1868–1878) and the Little War (1879–1880). The final three months ...

often referred as the

Spanish-American War Spanish Americans ( es, españoles estadounidenses, ''hispanoestadounidenses'', or ''hispanonorteamericanos'') are Americans whose ancestry originates wholly or partly from Spain. They are the longest-established European American group in th ...

. In 1983, Texas Historical Commission acknowledged the seacoast defense command posts establishing a Texas historical marker at the Sabine Pass Battleground State Historic Site.

World War II

In 1941, the United States authorized a

coastal artillery Coastal artillery is the branch of the armed forces concerned with operating anti-ship artillery or fixed gun batteries in coastal fortifications. From the Middle Ages until World War II, coastal artillery and naval artillery in the form of c ...

emplacement Emplacement may refer to: * A place where something is located * Fortification ** Artillery battery ** Casemate, fortified gun emplacement ** Redoubt, enclosed defense emplacement * The geological process of pluton emplacement See also * * * P ...

and Harbor Entrance Control Post at the Sabine Pass natural

waterway A waterway is any navigable body of water. Broad distinctions are useful to avoid ambiguity, and disambiguation will be of varying importance depending on the nuance of the equivalent word in other languages. A first distinction is necessary b ...

inlet An inlet is a (usually long and narrow) indentation of a shoreline, such as a small arm, bay, sound, fjord, lagoon or marsh, that leads to an enclosed larger body of water such as a lake, estuary, gulf or marginal sea. Overview In marine geogra ...

as a response to

Battle of the Atlantic The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, ran from 1939 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, covering a major part of the naval history of World War II. At its core was the Allied naval blockade ...

better known as

Operation Drumbeat The "Second Happy Time" (; officially Operation Paukenschlag ("Operation Drumbeat"), and also known among German submarine commanders as the "American Shooting Season") was a phase in the Battle of the Atlantic during which Axis powers, Axis s ...

orchestrated by

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. The Sabine Pass

military base A military base is a facility directly owned and operated by or for the military or one of its branches that shelters military equipment and personnel, and facilitates training and operations. A military base always provides accommodations for ...

exhibited checkpoint and guard end stations, coastal searchlights, coastal signal stations, and an

observation tower An observation tower is a structure used to view events from a long distance and to create a full 360 degree range of vision to conduct long distance observations. Observation towers are usually at least tall and are made from stone, iron, an ...

. The

coastal defence and fortification 300px, Castillo San Felipe de Barajas in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, an example of an Early Modern coastal defense Coastal defence (or defense) and coastal fortification are measures taken to provide protection against military attack at or ...

incorporated an

artillery battery In military organizations, an artillery battery is a unit or multiple systems of artillery, mortar systems, rocket artillery, multiple rocket launchers, surface-to-surface missiles, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, etc., so grouped to fac ...

command post complementary as a Coast Guard lifeboat station initially chartered in

1870s The 1870s (pronounced "eighteen-seventies") was a decade of the Gregorian calendar that began on January 1, 1870, and ended on December 31, 1879. The trends of the previous decade continued into this one, as new empires, imperialism and militar ...

as the

United States Life-Saving Service The United States Life-Saving ServiceDespite the lack of hyphen in its insignia, the agency itself is hyphenated in government documents including: and was a United States government agency that grew out of private and local humanitarian effort ...

. The Sabine Pass coastal defense installation was deemed

military surplus Military surplus are goods, usually matériel, that are sold or otherwise disposed of when held in excess or are no longer needed by the military. Entrepreneurs often buy these goods and resell them at surplus stores. Usually the goods sold by ...

as the

United States Department of War The United States Department of War, also called the War Department (and occasionally War Office in the early years), was the United States Cabinet department originally responsible for the operation and maintenance of the United States Army, a ...

operations tapered by

1945 1945 marked the end of World War II and the fall of Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. It is also the only year in which nuclear weapons have been used in combat. Events Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix. Januar ...

. The channel is also the only conceivable way that ships produced by shipyards in Orange and

Beaumont Beaumont may refer to: Places Canada * Beaumont, Alberta * Beaumont, Quebec England * Beaumont, Cumbria * Beaumont, Essex ** Beaumont Cut, a canal closed in the 1930s * Beaumont Street, Oxford France (communes) * Beaumont, Ardèche * ...

could have reached the seas.

Hurricanes

A powerful storm made landfall at Sabine Pass on October 12, 1886. It was the tenth hurricane of the season, now referred to as The Texas-Louisiana Hurricane of 1886, that all but wiped out Sabine Pass and Johnson Bayou in

Cameron Parish Cameron Parish (french: Paroisse de Cameron) is a parish in the southwest corner of the U.S. state of Louisiana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 5,617. The parish seat is Cameron. Although it is the largest parish by area in Louisia ...

. The storm, now considered to have been a category 3 (

Saffir–Simpson scale The Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale (SSHWS) classifies hurricanes—which in the Western Hemisphere are tropical cyclones that exceed the intensities of tropical depressions and tropical storms—into five categories distinguished by ...

), resulted in at least 196 deaths. Occurrence of the storm was recorded in the controversial "Diary of Louise" on October 20, 1886.

Hurricane Rita Hurricane Rita was the most intense tropical cyclone on record in the Gulf of Mexico and the fourth-most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded. Part of the record-breaking 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, which included three of the top ten L ...

made landfall on September 24, 2005, and on September 12–13, 2008,

Hurricane Ike Hurricane Ike () was a powerful tropical cyclone that swept through portions of the Greater Antilles and Northern America in September 2008, wreaking havoc on infrastructure and agriculture, particularly in Cuba and Texas. Ike took a sim ...

struck Sabine Pass and

Galveston Galveston ( ) is a coastal resort city and port off the Southeast Texas coast on Galveston Island and Pelican Island in the U.S. state of Texas. The community of , with a population of 47,743 in 2010, is the county seat of surrounding Galvesto ...

, generating the highest surge of 22 feet (6.7 meters) which is, according to the

North American Vertical Datum of 1988 The North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88) is the vertical datum for orthometric heights established for vertical control surveying in the United States of America based upon the General Adjustment of the North American Datum of 1988. ...

(NAVD 88), the highest ever recorded at Sabine Pass.

Current

Sabine Pass is a site for an

LNG Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled down to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volu ...

terminal because it is located along one of a few deepwater ports along the

Gulf Coast The Gulf Coast of the United States, also known as the Gulf South, 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 Texas, Louisiana, Mississ ...

suitable for LNG. The region also has an existing pipeline infrastructure with access to South East

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

and U.S. markets. The terminal can import LNG, as well as export up to 30 million tonnes of LNG per year. The former city of

Sabine Pass Sabine Pass is the natural outlet of Sabine Lake into the Gulf of Mexico. It borders Jefferson County, Texas, and Cameron Parish, Louisiana. History Civil War Two major battles occurred here during the American Civil War, known as the First and ...

, Texas, is now a neighborhood of Port Arthur.

References

External links

* * * * * {{Coord, 29, 43, 35, N, 93, 51, 48, W, display=title Channels of the United States Bodies of water of Louisiana Bodies of water of Texas Bodies of water of the Gulf of Mexico Landforms of Cameron Parish, Louisiana Landforms of Jefferson County, Texas Hurricane Ike