Port Aransas Light Station, Historic lighthouse in Aransas County, Texas, US.
The Port Aransas Light Station, also called Lydia Ann Lighthouse, is an octagonal red-brick tower with a gallery and white lantern, 21 m tall, standing before a one-storey wood-frame keeper's house on Harbor Island. Its fixed white light, at a focal height of 20 m, shines continuously at night and reaches 13 nautical miles (about 24 km).
The station was among the original Texas lights of the Lighthouse Service, formed in 1851 and merged into the Coast Guard in 1939. It is the second oldest lighthouse on the Texas coast and the oldest surviving structure in the Aransas Pass–Corpus Christi area. Listed on the National Register on 3 August 1977 (No. 77001423), it was extinguished and delisted in 1952, sold at auction in 1955, and returned to service by Charles Butt in 1988.
The station's name changed with the channel: when the Aransas Pass shifted, the passage was renamed Lydia Ann Channel and the light became Lydia Ann Light Station. Its original fourth-order Fresnel lens is displayed at the Port Aransas museum, while the tower itself still shows a fixed white light at night.
The lighthouse sits on Harbour Island and cannot be reached on foot from the mainland, so a boat trip is often needed to get close. The best views of the tower can be had from the water or from nearby shoreline spots around Port Aransas.
The Port Aransas Light Station is one of the few lighthouses in Texas that still has a full-time caretaker living on site. This ongoing human presence makes it stand out among the other light towers along the Texas coast.
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