Halfmoon Reef Lighthouse – Port Lavaca, TX
Let’s set expectations: this is a ten-minute stop, and it’s a good one. The Halfmoon Reef Lighthouse now stands at the Port Lavaca Welcome Center, in the parking lot beside the Bauer Community Center, it’s cute, and it’s not as tall as what you picture when someone says lighthouse. There’s a reason for that, and the reason is the interesting part.
This thing wasn’t built on a shore. It was built in 1858 in the water, standing on seven iron screw piles drilled into an oyster shell reef in the middle of Matagorda Bay. The hexagonal wooden house on top held a keeper, an assistant, and in a couple of eras entire families raising kids over open water. Its lamp burned through a ruby red chimney so sailors wouldn’t confuse it with the white Matagorda Island light down the coast. Confederate troops put it out during the Civil War to frustrate the Union blockade, and it went right back to work in 1868.
A 1942 hurricane finally beat it, ripping off the walkway and racking the pilings, and the Coast Guard sold the building instead of fixing it. A local dredging outfit hauled it to Point Comfort on a barge and used it as an office for 36 years, which is a fate no lighthouse deserves. In 1978 owner Bill Bauer donated it to the county, it crossed the causeway to Port Lavaca in 1979, and a restoration (partly an Eagle Scout project) put it back together next to the community center that carries Bauer’s name. It’s the last surviving screw-pile lighthouse from the Texas coast and the oldest surviving wooden lighthouse in the state.
Walk the porch, read the historical marker, take your pictures, and roll on. If you want inside, ask at the Welcome Center. Lighthouse Beach is right there too, and the Port Lavaca fishing pier is five minutes away.
