10/25/2026
While at the hayride yesterday, there was 1 question I couldn’t answer. However I knew the calculation had been done by McNeese University’s engineering department years ago. The question was”how much does it weigh?” Answer, around 5 million pounds, but there are a lot of unknowns of the cypress timber and seashell foundation.
The large buttresses of the Sabine Pass Lighthouse give the masonry structure stability in the thick Louisiana mud, and because of this, many comments over the years have likened the unique tower to a rocket. One group of McNeese University engineering students is tasked with answering the question of settlement and how to fix this uneven issue, but to understand this you have to estimate weight and load handling ability of the underlying soils. The estimated weight of the fully restored 87 feet tall lighthouse would be just shy of 5 million pounds. For comparison, the Antares Rocket is 133 feet tall and weighs 652,500 pounds, Falcon Heavy which is 230 feet tall weighs 3.13 million pounds, and the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse is 210 feet tall weighs 10 million pounds.
