Saluria Bayou—also known as McHenry Bayou—lies just inside Pass Cavallo on the south side, linking Matagorda and Espiritu Santo Bays. In the 1850s, the bayou became the center of a modest but important pocket of coastal commerce. The small town of Saluria stood along its shore, serving as a port of entry, a harbor of refuge, and a critical transit point for traffic moving between Texas’s interior settlements and the Gulf. Ten feet of water could be carried into the bayou, making it one of the best anchorages along this stretch of the coast. Bay craft, barges, and shallow-draft steamers used the inlet daily, and mail for Corpus Christi, St. Joseph’s Island, Lamar, and other ports was routinely landed here. The United States customs collector for the region also resided at Saluria, elevating the bayou’s significance in federal maritime administration.

Because winds on this coast could shift with alarming suddenness, the bayou was notoriously difficult to locate at night. Northerly gales often swept the coastline without warning, and more than one small vessel had been blown out to sea because its crew could not find the entrance after dark. In 1855, the Lighthouse Board concluded that a beacon at Saluria “would be of great service to bay craft and steamboats,” both as a guide to the harbor and as a safeguard against such deadly accidents. Congress appropriated the modest sum of $500 for the project—barely enough to purchase land and construct the most basic kind of federal light.

Even with limited funds, the Board moved ahead. By 1857, although land titles were still being secured for several small lights in the region—including those at Saluria, Corpus Christi, and the mouth of the Rio Grande—preparations had begun.

Construction took place early in 1858, alongside major federal works nearby at Halfmoon Reef and Alligator Head. While those larger stations were built as iron screw-pile lighthouses, the Saluria structure was deliberately simple to keep within Congress’s $500 limit. The government purchased a 2,500-square-foot tract of swamp at the bayou’s edge and erected a small, open timber-frame tower, twelve feet square at its base and only thirty-two feet tall. Despite its small size, the tower was functional—an efficient tool for local navigation rather than a seacoast beacon.

The Lighthouse Board announced that a sixth-order Fresnel lens would be illuminated for the first time on or about August 1. The beacon stood thirty-three feet above mean sea level and served as a guiding point for vessels threading the bay’s interior waterways. It also played an unexpected additional role: the newly completed screw-pile light at the Swash, opposite Alligator Head, was aligned so that the buoy marking the center of the Swash Channel lay in range with the Swash Lighthouse and the small beacon at Saluria. This made the tiny tower at Saluria a critical endpoint in a navigation line used by mariners entering the upper reaches of Matagorda Bay.

The first known keeper of the station was Thomas Hanson, who served from 1859 to the outbreak of the Civil War. His work was modest but essential—tending the delicate wick lamp, maintaining the fragile wooden structure, and ensuring that the small beacon remained visible for the constant flow of local traffic.

The Civil War transformed the Texas coast, and Saluria was no exception. After the inauguration of the Union blockade in 1861, Confederate forces extinguished nearly every lighthouse in Texas by July of that year. Only one continued operating longer than the rest: the Saluria Lighthouse. Because the bayou remained vital for interior navigation—especially for the movement of Confederate and civilian craft between Matagorda Bay and inland ports—the light was briefly relit. To avoid attracting the attention of Union blockaders offshore, Confederate authorities shaded the seaward side of the lantern, allowing the beacon to shine only into the protected interior waters. This clever modification enabled the light to function as a local guide while minimizing the risk of becoming a target. The station was known to be active until at least late November 1861, after which no dispatches from Texas reached the Confederate Lighthouse Bureau in Richmond, Virginia.

The final chapter of the Saluria Lighthouse came during the Federal coastal campaign of 1862. As Union forces advanced along the Texas shoreline, Confederate commanders withdrew from exposed positions, employing a scorched-earth strategy to deny the enemy any usable resources. On December 25, 1862, Confederate officer Dan D. Shea issued orders to destroy the town of Saluria. Captain Brackenridge and a detachment were instructed to cross over to the island at night, “scatter your force in the buildings,” and “set every house on fire.” The same order directed the party to place a keg of powder in the Matagorda Lighthouse at Pass Cavallo and, “if you have an opportunity, burn Saluria Light House also.”

The instructions were executed. Saluria was torched, and the tiny lighthouse, built of little more than braced timber and wooden sheathing, burned or collapsed amid the destruction. Federal naval officers entering the bay later described the settlement as devastated, its buildings ruined and its wharves destroyed. By the end of the war, Saluria Lighthouse no longer existed.

After peace returned, the Lighthouse Board surveyed the Texas coast to determine which stations should be rebuilt. Some, like Matagorda Island Lighthouse, were restored. Others, including Saluria, were not. The 1868 annual report listed the structure as “entirely destroyed during the war,” adding that “there seems to be no very pressing necessity for its immediate reconstruction.” A year later the Board reiterated that although the beacon had been useful “for interior navigation,” many other lights on the Gulf Coast were in far greater need of repair or replacement.

Instead of rebuilding at the bayou, the government constructed East Shoal and West Shoal Lighthouses in 1872, farther inside Matagorda Bay. These stations better marked the evolving channels and rendered the tiny wooden beacon largely obsolete.

Keepers: Thomas Hanson (1859 – 1861).

References:

1. Annual Report of the Lighthouse Board, various years.
2. Lighthouses, Lightships, and the Gulf of Mexico, David Cipra, 1997.

No light exists at this location today.

Find the closest hotels to Saluria Lighthouse