Sabine Pass is the natural outlet of

Sabine Lake Sabine Lake is a bay on the Gulf coasts of Texas and Louisiana, located approximately east of Houston and west of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Baton Rouge, adjoining the city of Port Arthur, Texas, Port Arthur. The lake is formed by the confluence ...

into the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico () is an oceanic basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, mostly surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States; on the southw ...

. It borders

Jefferson County, Texas Jefferson County is a county in the Coastal Plain or Gulf Prairie region of Southeast Texas. The Neches River forms its northeastern boundary. As of the 2020 census, the population was 256,526. The county seat is Beaumont. Jefferson County ...

, and Cameron Parish, Louisiana.

History

Civil War

Two major battles occurred here during the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...

, known as the First and

Second The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of U ...

Battles of Sabine Pass.

Spanish–American War

In May 1898, the 55th United States Congress authorized the establishment of two seacoast defense forts at Sabine Pass relative to the Texas Gulf Coast. The

fortification A fortification (also called a fort, fortress, fastness, or stronghold) is a military construction designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Lati ...

s were a response as hostilities intensified in the

during the

Cuban War of Independence The Cuban War of Independence (), also known in Cuba as the Necessary War (), fought from 1895 to 1898, was the last of three liberation wars that Cuba fought against Spain, the other two being the Ten Years' War (1868–1878) and the Litt ...

often referred as the

Spanish–American War The Spanish–American War (April 21 – August 13, 1898) was fought between Restoration (Spain), Spain and the United States in 1898. It began with the sinking of the USS Maine (1889), USS ''Maine'' in Havana Harbor in Cuba, and resulted in the ...

. In 1983, Texas Historical Commission acknowledged the seacoast defense command posts establishing a Texas historical marker at the Sabine Pass Battleground State Historic Site.

World War II

In 1941, the United States authorized a

coastal artillery Coastal artillery is the branch of the armed forces concerned with operating anti-ship artillery or fixed gun batteries in coastal fortifications. From the Middle Ages until World War II, coastal artillery and naval artillery in the form of ...

emplacement and Harbor Entrance Control Post at the Sabine Pass natural

waterway A waterway is any Navigability, navigable body of water. Broad distinctions are useful to avoid ambiguity, and disambiguation will be of varying importance depending on the nuance of the equivalent word in other ways. A first distinction is ...

inlet An inlet is a typically long and narrow indentation of a shoreline such as a small arm, cove, bay, sound, fjord, lagoon or marsh, that leads to an enclosed larger body of water such as a lake, estuary, gulf or marginal sea. Overview In ...

as a response to

Battle of the Atlantic The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, ran from 1939 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, covering a major part of the naval history of World War II. At its core was the Allies of World War II, ...

better known as Operation Drumbeat orchestrated by

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

. The Sabine Pass

military base A military base is a facility directly owned and operated by or for the military or one of its branches that shelters military equipment and personnel, and facilitates training and operations. A military base always provides accommodations for ...

exhibited checkpoint and guard end stations, coastal searchlights, coastal signal stations, and an

observation tower An observation tower is a tower used to view events from a long distance and to create a full 360 degree range of vision to conduct long distance observations. Observation towers are usually at least tall and are made from stone, iron, and woo ...

. The coastal defence and fortification incorporated an

artillery battery In military organizations, an artillery battery is a unit or multiple systems of artillery, mortar systems, rocket artillery, multiple rocket launchers, surface-to-surface missiles, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, etc., so grouped to f ...

command post complementary as a Coast Guard lifeboat station initially chartered in 1870s as the United States Life-Saving Service. The Sabine Pass coastal defense installation was deemed

military surplus Military surplus is goods, usually materiel, that are sold or otherwise disposed of when held in excess or are no longer needed by the military. Entrepreneurs often buy these goods and resell them at surplus stores. Usually the goods sold by th ...

as the

United States Department of War The United States Department of War, also called the War Department (and occasionally War Office in the early years), was the United States Cabinet department originally responsible for the operation and maintenance of the United States Army, als ...

operations tapered by

1945 1945 marked the end of World War II, the fall of Nazi Germany, and the Empire of Japan. It is also the year concentration camps were liberated and the only year in which atomic weapons have been used in combat. Events World War II will be ...

. The channel is also the only conceivable way that ships produced by shipyards in Orange and Beaumont could have reached the seas.

Hurricanes

A powerful storm made landfall at Sabine Pass on October 12, 1886. It was the tenth hurricane of the season, now referred to as The Texas-Louisiana Hurricane of 1886, that all but wiped out Sabine Pass and Johnson Bayou in Cameron Parish. The storm, now considered to have been a category 3 ( Saffir–Simpson scale), resulted in at least 196 deaths. Occurrence of the storm was recorded in the controversial "Diary of Louise" on October 20, 1886.

Hurricane Rita Hurricane Rita was the most intense tropical cyclone on record in the Gulf of Mexico, tying with Hurricane Milton in 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, 2024, as well as being the fourth-most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded. Part of the ...

made landfall on September 24, 2005, and on September 12–13, 2008,

Hurricane Ike Hurricane Ike () was a powerful tropical cyclone that swept through portions of the Greater Antilles and Northern America in September 2008, wreaking havoc on infrastructure and agriculture, particularly in Cuba and Texas. Ike took a sim ...

struck Sabine Pass and

Galveston Galveston ( ) is a Gulf Coast of the United States, coastal resort town, resort city and port off the Southeast Texas coast on Galveston Island and Pelican Island (Texas), Pelican Island in the U.S. state of Texas. The community of , with a pop ...

, generating the highest surge of which is, according to the

North American Vertical Datum of 1988 The North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88) is the vertical datum for orthometric heights established for vertical control surveying in the United States based upon the General Adjustment of the North American Datum of 1988. It superse ...

(NAVD 88), the highest ever recorded at Sabine Pass.

Current

Sabine Pass is a site for an LNG terminal because it is located along one of a few deepwater ports along the

Gulf Coast The Gulf Coast of the United States, also known as the Gulf South or the South Coast, is the coastline along the Southern United States where they meet the Gulf of Mexico. The coastal states that have a shoreline on the Gulf of Mexico are Tex ...

suitable for LNG. The region also has an existing pipeline infrastructure with access to South East

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

and U.S. markets. The terminal can import LNG, as well as export up to 30 million tonnes of LNG per year. The former city of Sabine Pass, Texas, is now a neighborhood of Port Arthur.

References

External links

* * * * * {{Coord, 29, 43, 35, N, 93, 51, 48, W, display=title Channels of the United States Bodies of water of Louisiana Bodies of water of Texas Bodies of water of the Gulf of Mexico Landforms of Cameron Parish, Louisiana Landforms of Jefferson County, Texas Hurricane Ike Sabine River (Texas–Louisiana)