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 
in his first chapter, Baker provides ten more chapters, each 
one detailing a surviving Texas lighthouse and its 
construction, navigational service, and historical role.  
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 the 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.


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T. LINDSAY BAKER, award-winning author of many books, is 
director of the Texas Heritage Museum at Hill Country College 
in Hillsboro, Texas. HAROLD PHENIX makes his home in Hunt,
Texas, and continues to paint.

Number One:  Gulf Coast Studies, sponsored by Texas A&M
University-Corpus Christi