Port Isabel Lighthouse State Historic Site

The point was a ranch headquarters called El Fronton de Santa Isabela in the 1830s. In 1846 Taylor made it his supply depot, and wounded men from Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma were brought here. After the war it fed Fort Brown and Ringgold Barracks upriver, and the traffic through Brazos Santiago Pass justified a light. Congress appropriated $15,000 on September 28, 1850. The brick tower was finished in 1852 and the station established in 1853, its fixed white light visible for almost sixteen miles.

Both armies used the tower as an observation post in the Civil War, and after Union occupation it was repaired and relit on February 22, 1866. In 1887 an investigation found the United States held no title to the land. The light was put out in 1888, relit in 1895 after the government bought the site for $5,000, and discontinued for good in 1905 as the river changed and railroads took the trade. Mr. and Mrs. Lon C. Hill Jr. and the Port Isabel Realty Company gave the tower to the state in 1950.

A reproduction of a third-order Fresnel lens was installed in November 2022, and it burns nightly as a fixed light, though no ship steers by it. Visitors climb 75 stairs and three short ladders to the gallery for views of South Padre Island's beaches. A rebuilt lightkeeper's cottage holds the museum and visitor center. Of the sixteen lighthouses built on the Texas coast, this is the only one the public can enter.