Sabine Pass Lighthouse, on the Louisiana side of the Sabine River opposite Sabine Pass, Texas, was first lit in 1857 and served a strategic Gulf waterway until 1952. Built on a marshy site with an unusual buttressed foundation and originally fitted with a third-order Fresnel lens, it is one of only three U.S. lighthouses of its design. Its light was extinguished during the Civil War, and the tower was used by both Confederate and Union forces, including during a deadly 1863 skirmish. Hurricanes, channel engineering, and eventual abandonment brought decline, but the surviving tower remains historically significant and endangered.