Bagdad-Matamoros, C.S.A.

Bagdad had been a huddle of fishermen's shanties until cotton arrived. Ships anchored off the river mouth, unloaded legal cargo by day onto small boats, and put contraband ashore after dark, never entered in Mexican customs books. Laborers there were said to earn up to ten dollars a day in specie, and boatmen running lighters through the surf several times that. Accounts put the population above 15,000. When the war ended the boom collapsed. A storm in the autumn of 1867 wiped out Bagdad and its Texas neighbor Clarksville, and Mexico declared the town nonexistent in 1880.

What the plaque says

Bagdad-Matamoros, C.S.A. Civil War "Sister Cities", across the river in neutral Mexico. Were linked to Texas by a ferry which landed here. Ferry hauled to Matamoros the Confederate cotton brought from East Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas to Brownsville. In Matamoros, many speculators and agents vied for cotton to ship to Europe, via Havana. They offered in exchange vital goods: guns, ammunition, drugs, shoes, cloth. At Bagdad, on the Gulf, cotton was loaded from small boats onto ships riding the Gulf of Mexico. Goods crossing here were the South's lifeblood. (1964)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stillman House Museum — steps away
  The 1850 Greek Revival house of Charles Stillman, who laid out Brownsville in 1848 beside the army's Fort Brown, and for a century the home of the Treviño family.
• Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park — 7.3 mi
  A flat coastal prairie north of Brownsville where Taylor's army and Arista's Army of the North fought the first major battle of the Mexican War on May 8, 1846, now interpreted from both sides.
• Port Isabel Lighthouse State Historic Site — 22 mi
  A 72-foot brick tower finished in 1852 for the Brazos Santiago shipping lane, dark from 1905 until a reproduction lens was lit in 2022, and the only Texas lighthouse open to the public.
• Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge — 25 mi
  A coastal refuge set up in 1946 for wintering redhead ducks, with 417 bird species recorded and, by the Fish and Wildlife Service's account, the largest ocelot population in the United States.

More markers nearby

• Fort Brown — steps away
• Home of Charles Stillman, 1810-1875 — steps away
• Fort Brown Reservation — steps away
• Cameron County — 0.4 mi