Aransas Pass, C.S.A.

The plaque speaks of inlets and cotton; this is the garrison that guarded them. Fort Semmes was an earthen work on Mustang Island, held by fewer than a hundred men under Major George Dunaway, from a Texas militia unit and a company of the Eighth Texas Infantry. In mid-November 1863 Union troops of the 13th and 15th Maine and the 20th Iowa landed under General Thomas Ransom, with the warship Monongahela firing from the Gulf. Dunaway surrendered 98 men rather than try to retreat to the mainland. Two weeks later the Federals took Fort Esperanza on Matagorda Island.

What the plaque says

Aransas Pass, C.S.A. Aransas Pass, the natural inlet (3 miles east) to Aransas Bay, separates San Jose and Mustang Islands. These islands are part of a chain of barrier islands which extend along the entire length of Texas' Coastal Mainland. At the beginning of the civil war countless small vessels transported confederate supplies up and down the Texas and northern Mexican Coast virtually undisturbed by federal naval forces. Cotton destined for foreign markets moved freely through Aransas Pass. By early 1861 a union blockade had halted trafficking by confederate vessels beyond the barrier islands. However, confederate supplies inside the barrier chain continued and inlets such as Aransas Pass became sites of increasingly strategic military value. The Aransas Pass area came under the control of Federal Captain J.W. Kittredge's Naval Forces until his capture in September 1862. In November 1863 a massive federal force gained control of the south Texas Coast from the Rio Grande to Matagorda Bay. Eventually, Federal Forces lost control of the mainland behind Aransas Pass and in June 1864 withdrew from the area. Afterward, confederate ships successfully eluded the federal blockade and delivered vital supplies to the confederacy by way of Aransas Pass. Sesquicentennial of Texas Statehood 1845-1995.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Port Aransas — 0.4 mi
  The fishing town at the north end of Mustang Island, reached by a free state ferry that crosses the ship channel day and night, with a university marine lab begun in a one-room shack.
• Mustang Island State Park — 14 mi
  More than five miles of Gulf beach on a barrier island named for wild horses, with beach camping on the sand and a twenty-mile paddling trail on the bay side.
• Fulton Mansion State Historic Site — 15 mi
  A French Second Empire house of 1874-77 on Aransas Bay, paid for with hides and tallow, with gas lights, central heat and hot running water no other house nearby had.
• USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 20 mi
  An Essex-class carrier of 1943 moored off North Beach, the Blue Ghost that Tokyo Rose kept reporting sunk, and the Navy's training carrier for nearly three decades after.

More markers nearby

• World War II Coastal Defenses at the Aransas Pass — 0.3 mi
• Tarpon Inn — 0.3 mi
• Aransas Pass Light Station — 1.6 mi
• Terminal Railroad — 6.4 mi