The jetties put in place by Eads still survive, though they lie buried beneath layers of sand. In 1982, Eads’ jetties were designated a National Historic Engineering Landmark, and a plaque commemorating the honor has been placed a few miles upriver at Fort Jackson.

Several lighthouses have stood at South Pass, including some which were located on Eads’ jetties. The first South Pass Lighthouse was built by Winslow Lewis, who returned to the Mississippi Delta a couple of years after having successfully completed a tower at Frank’s Island to mark Northeast Pass. Lewis also supervised work on a tower at nearby Southwest Pass in parallel with the work at South Pass. To assist mariners in distinguishing his entrance lights at the three passes from one another, Lewis gave each a unique daymark and light characteristic. The South Pass tower exhibited a flashing light and was encircled by a horizontal black band midway up the white tower. At Southwest Pass, a fixed main light was shown above three secondary lights, and the white tower was painted with vertical black stripes. The tower at Frank’s Island was painted all white, and displayed a single, fixed beam of light.

Lewis built his tower at South Pass on Gordon’s Island, which was named after the customs collector at New Orleans. The lights flashing characteristic was created by placing seven lamps on each side of a revolving chandelier. The lamps were first lit by Keeper Henry Heistand on May 15, 1832.

Lewis had planned to drive piles into the soft ground to provide a secure foundation for his tower. However, collector Martin Gordon persuaded Lewis to “float” the tower on a cross-hatched pattern of squared timbers. In the months after the completion of the tower, the channel at the entrance to South Pass shifted and Gordon’s Island became prone to flooding. In 1839, logs carried by the river struck the keeper’s dwelling, jarring it from its foundation. The lighthouse also suffered damage and was subsequently declared a total loss. A storm in 1841 erased all signs of the station’s existence.

Lewis was tapped to build a replacement for his masonry tower at South Pass. This time an octagonal wooden tower was constructed, with the thought that it could easily be moved if erosion threatened. The tower was painted with the station’s signature black band, and the lighting apparatus from the original tower was used. The tower, completed in June of 1842, never had to be moved, as after just five years of service it was so decayed that yet another replacement was required.

The collector at New Orleans requested that the third South Pass Lighthouse be an iron lighthouse. However, his request was not fulfilled and in 1848, another wooden octagonal tower rising to a height of fifty-four feet, with a forty by thirty foot Victorian dwelling built into its base, was constructed at the pass.

South Pass Lighthouse built in 1881 Photograph courtesy U.S. Coast Guard

During the Civil War, Confederate forces removed the lighting apparatus and oil from the station. The tower was soon refitted with a revolving third-order Fresnel lens in the fall of 1862 after it was firmly controlled by the Union. A fourth-order lens was placed in the lantern room a few years later, to lessen the load on the decaying tower.

The light at South Pass was scheduled to be deactivated following the completion of an iron tower at Southwest Pass, however, when Eads’ jetties greatly improved the channel at South Pass, the Lighthouse Board decided to place an iron tower at South Pass too. The hexagonal tower, completed in 1881, had a height of 105 feet, and a two-story, iron-clad, dwelling was built into its base. Some of the material used to construct the tower was salvaged from the aborted attempt to place a lighthouse on Trinity Shoal. In 1890, a fifty-four-foot wooden tower built atop piles and displaying a fifth-order lens was built to mark the east jetty. A smaller companion light was also placed on the west jetty.

Keeper I.C.M. Erickson was keeper of the east jetty light, when on April 8, 1923, he set off across the river in a rowboat. Perhaps he was tired that day, as the current swept him out into the gulf. An outbound freighter picked him up fifteen miles from the station, and radioed the mainland that they would take the weary keeper with them to their next port of call – Tampico, Mexico, over 700 miles away. Erickson eventually returned to his station, and almost exactly a year later he was again carried out into the gulf as he attempted to cross the river. This time, Erickson never made it back to the station.

Today, the tall iron tower is still active, although the first-order Fresnel lens was replaced in 1951 with a modern beacon. That same year the station also lost another keeper, but fortunately it was just to automation and not to the Gulf.

1. Lighthouses, Lightships, and the Gulf of Mexico, David Cipra, 1997.