The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-08-02
Bagdad City, Mexico,
Was a Wicked Town

Bagdad, the magic, mystical city Of
| Haroun- Al Rasehid in the "Arabian
Nights, must have been remarkable.
But Bagdad, the rich city which -four
ished at the mouth of the Ria Grande
/ in Mexico during the Civil War. was,
for the size, one of the most prosperous
and wealthy and at the same tim.
most wicked cities that have ever ex-
| listed.
Today Bagdad is but a memory. A
tropical sun now beats down on a glar-
ing stretch of white, hot sand where
once stood the greatest cotton shipping
| port in the world. No ruins of build
1 ings break the monotonous view. The
long wharves are gone. The hotels and
gambling dens have disappeared. The
steamboats, on the Rio Grande are no
more and no ocean going steamships
have ridden in the old harbor for forty
years.
| Bagdad sprung up in day. 1t died
| in an hour. 1t began its existence
menced the blockade of the Southern
ports in the early COS 1t disappeared
! for all time when the hurricane or
October, 1867, wiped it out of existence.
From beginning to end the city led a
strenuous life. 1t was at Bagdad that
negro soldiers of the United States first
shot up or raided a town. Several
companies of negroes from the reg1-
ments encamped at GAINESVILLE, on the
American side of the river, crossed into
Mexico territory January IA, 1866, and
for fourteen days held the city. More
| than forty years later the negroes of
the Twenty infantry raided ana
shot up Brownsville, Tex, only
twenty miles inland from the almost
forgotten town of Bagdad.
Pithole City, in the Pennsylvania oil
region, was the most wicked of all the
oil towns in the days when petroleum
was young. Cripple Creek and Dodge
City were rough and wild when they
were on the outposts of civilization.
But Bagdad roasting under the hot
Mexican sun, composed of the riff raft
of many nations, along with that por-
tion of it's population which was re
spectacle, was a saething caldron OF
inquiry. There was no law and no
order. Cotton was king, and to the
king must be laid the blame for the
crime of Bagdad 1t was the time
when cotton was worth almost its
weight in gold. The people of Bagdad
made fortunes. And the foundations
for many of the great fortunes of the
South and Southwest were laid in the
city which, during. its few years Of life,
was the most wicked on the American
continent.
The North and South were at war,
Maximilian and the French were In
Mexico. The country south of the Rio
Grande was torn and disrupted. The
North was blockading all the ports in
the South. There was a great cry for
cotton from all over the world. The
price of the stuff scared as the demand
grew greater until the top price-more
than a dollar pound-was reached.
Bagdad was the result of the block
ade Of Southern seaeoast cities. Some
one conceived the idea of establishing
shipping port on the Mexican coast,
where it would be immune from inter,
ference on the part of the North They
chose the strip of land between the
Gulf Of Mexico and the Rio Grande
and built Bagdad.
The growth of the place was wonder
full. Schooners ran the blockade of
Southern ports and rushed to Bagdad
with their loads Of cotton, hotly pur,
sued, oftentimes, by the big Federal
ships. The wharves of the city on the
sand were pileed high with bales of the
precious product. The large warehouses
were full from floors to roof. Every
open stretch of land was filed with
cotton. And from a town of few
thousand inhabitants Bagdad grew in
leaps and bounds to be place of g.,
o. persons.
Sailors of many nations mingled in
the crowd on the unpaved, INSIDE
walked streets, drinking imported
wines in the saloons and gambling
with the cosmopolitan throngs in the
many dens. There were aristoerats
and renegades from the South. There
were those from the North and from
the great Southwest. Gamblers, con-
fidence men, women of the under world,
parasites of every description were
there. And the world-old lure of
money had attracted them all.
There was money in Bagdad, too. 1t
all event United States currency,
Confederate paper, and coins, the sill
yer and gold of the Mexican empire.
French Napoleons and small pieces of
money, Spanish currency of all kinds,
nuggets and "sinkers'' of pure, or
nearly pure, gold and silver, and cot
ton itself-all passed readily in ex-
change.
Cotton was selling at 81 a pound
Bales averaged 800 to 700 pounds in