Its narrow streets were lined with saloons, hotels, warehouses and numerous palaces of pleasure. And one time the town even had two schoolhouses. During the Civil War Bagdad really flourished as the Union had strangled the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic supply lines with its massive blockade. Thus the port at Bagdad became vitally important for the Confederacy to ship cotton into Mexico and from there to England and the rest of Europe. Thus gold poured into the town and historians report that common labourers could earn more than five dollars a day - a fabulous sum for the times.
When the war ended Bagdad continued to prosper - being known as the place where anything could be bought for a prize until, as if by divine retribution, a hurricane raced out of the Gulf on Oct. 2nd 1867 and the town was three quarters destroyed - the death toll was too great to calculate as a large percentage of the population had been transitory and many were dragged away never to be seen again.
"The Brownsville Courier gives full details of the awful hurricane on the Rio Grande, from which we quote the following: "On the 7th of the present month, the long heated term was put an end to by a refreshing norther, which sprung up about 8 o'clock A. M., and continued with more or less violence, until about 9 o'clock P. M., when it assumed a rotary motion...FULL ARTICLE IN PDF HERE
Bagdad struggled to rebuild itself but then in September 1874 a fierce tropical storm battered the area for two days and two nights and when the storm subsided all that was left, where the city had once stood, was a vast expanse of soggy sand.
3 comments:
I set part of Peace at Any Price in Brownsville, and the book's climax was enlivened by a Gulf Coast hurricane of the kind that destroyed the original Galveston in 1900.
You can read more about this at www.blackhorsewesterns.com/bhe8 The book itself, which I greatly enjoyed researching and writing, is available again in a Linford Western Library edition. The Saddlebums Western Review kindly described the novel as "the quintessential action-packed western".
I was wondering if this was the same hurricane as the one that wiped out Galveston. Chap just answered my question.
Very interesting - I didn't know about Bagdad at all. I imagine it got its name due to the nature of the town? Those border towns were something else. Kind of reminds me of Nogales, Arizona - my grandfather writes about it in Pulp Writer. Nogales is still a little on the wild side, from what I hear, but not in a good way.
Laurie,
Yes, the impression I have is that in the post Civil War days the Gulf Coast area was very wild. Here's a few lines from the novel I mentioned:
Lena-Marie briefly drew on her cigarette; tapped ash from it delicately.
"What Raoul says is true," she said. "Texans have long known the area south of the Nueces River, including Palmito, as the 'dead line of sheriffs'. There is no law in place for us to break. We are benefactors, but must provide ourselves and the community with private protection. Which means hiring former irregulars like you."
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