Lighthouses of Texas (Gulf Coast Studies) - Tapa dura

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, Baker provides chapters detailing the surviving Texas lighthouses. 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 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.

T. LINDSAY BAKER, who holds the W. K. Gordon Endowed Chair in Texas History at Tarleton State University, has produced numerous books on Texas and southwestern history, including Adobe Walls (Texas A&M University Press, 1986; with Billy R. Harrison) and The Birth of a Texas Ghost Town (Texas A&M University Press, 2008). The late HAROLD PHENIX, remembered as one of Texas' most outstanding watercolorists, was a native Texan and graduate of the University of Texas where he earned a degree in architectural engineering.