1923 Point Isabel Coast Guard Building

Storms shaped this station before the marker's building stood. The Life-Saving Service had a house going up at Brazos Santiago in 1879, and a hurricane in August 1880 damaged it enough that it was taken down and rebuilt by autumn 1881. A hurricane on October 16, 1912, destroyed that house, and its replacement was finished in 1913. A later station on Boca Chica beach was also lost to a storm before the crew moved to the island's south end in the 1920s. Sources differ on whether that was 1923 or 1924.

What the plaque says

1923 Point Isabel Coast Guard Building The federal government has operated a coastal installation at Point Isabel since 1852. This structure is the third permanent building erected here, one of a line of nine stations established along the Gulf of Mexico from Florida to the Texas-Mexico border. Originally consisting of a main floor, attic, and lookout tower, all elevated off the ground on wood and concrete pilings, the structure served as barracks and headquarters for the U.S. Coast Guard unit that patrolled the coastline and conducted sea rescues. (1988)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Port Isabel Lighthouse State Historic Site — 2.7 mi
  A 72-foot brick tower finished in 1852 for the Brazos Santiago shipping lane, dark from 1905 until a reproduction lens was lit in 2022, and the only Texas lighthouse open to the public.
• Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge — 16 mi
  A coastal refuge set up in 1946 for wintering redhead ducks, with 417 bird species recorded and, by the Fish and Wildlife Service's account, the largest ocelot population in the United States.
• Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park — 20 mi
  A flat coastal prairie north of Brownsville where Taylor's army and Arista's Army of the North fought the first major battle of the Mexican War on May 8, 1846, now interpreted from both sides.
• Stillman House Museum — 24 mi
  The 1850 Greek Revival house of Charles Stillman, who laid out Brownsville in 1848 beside the army's Fort Brown, and for a century the home of the Treviño family.

More markers nearby

• Brazos Santiago, C.S.A. — 0.5 mi
• Queen Isabel Inn — 2.5 mi
• Port Isabel (Old Point Isabel) — 2.6 mi
• Port of Matamoros — 2.7 mi