South Pass Range Lights, Maritime navigation tower in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, US

South Pass Range Lights is a 35-meter skeletal tower with a cylindrical utility building located at the mouth of the Mississippi River Delta. The structure sits at one of the most critical navigation points for vessels heading toward Louisiana ports.

The first light station at South Pass started operations in 1832 under keeper Henry Heistand. It marked the beginning of guided navigation through one of America's most important waterways.

The settlement around the light was renamed Port Eads after James Buchanan Eads, whose wooden jetty system deepened the Mississippi's channels; when the jetties were finished, trade at the Port of New Orleans doubled. The keeper's dwelling of the 1848 tower had a porch on six wooden columns, recalling the French-Colonial plantation houses of south Louisiana.

The station stands on Gordon's Island at South Pass, reachable only by boat; there is no road or bridge to the island. Port Eads marina, rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina with about $12 million in federal funds, offers docking, refueling, bunk rooms and a small restaurant for those arriving by water. The light was automated in 1971 and deactivated in 2014, so it is seen from the channel rather than entered.

The 1881 tower was built with materials originally ordered in 1873 for the Trinity Shoal Light, until the Lighthouse Board changed its mind and placed a lightship there instead. Its first-order Fresnel lens, replaced by a DCB-224 optic in 1951, is now displayed at the Louisiana State Museum in Baton Rouge.