Fort Point Light (Texas)
lighthouse in Texas, United States
Fort Point Light was a lighthouse located on the south side of the entrance to Galveston Bay in Texas. It served as an important navigational aid for vessels entering the bay during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
History
The site for Fort Point Light was reserved as early as 1836 by the Republic of Texas, but construction did not begin until Congress appropriated funds in 1878. The lighthouse was completed in 1881 and first lit in 1882. Built on a screw-pile foundation, the structure featured a hexagonal keeper's dwelling with a cast-iron frame and wooden elements, topped by a lantern housing a fourth-order Fresnel lens.
The light marked the southern approach to Galveston Bay and provided fixed white illumination with red and dark sectors to guide ships through the channel. Despite its strategic location, the light was discontinued in 1909 after only 27 years of service, as newer aids to navigation were introduced.
Although the light was removed, the station continued to operate as a fog signal until 1950. The remaining structure was dismantled in 1953. Today, a modern beacon near the original site functions as a range light for the Houston Ship Channel.
The public source identifies “Fort Point Light (Texas)” as lighthouse in Texas, United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Fort, Point and Light.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5471862. Authority coordinates are 29.337, -94.770. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1836, 1878, 1881 and 1882.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fort Point Light (Texas)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.