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ANOTHER "GREAT BOTTLE DIGGING STORY" FROM THE PAGES OF

ANTIQUE BOTTLE AND GLASS COLLECTOR MAGAZINE

THE MAGAZINE OF THE ANTIQUE BOTTLE COLLECTING HOBBY

Texas is hardly considered a bottle collecting hot spot. After all, during the pontil era of bottle making, Texas was still a frontier. Indians were definitely a threat to many settlers and the cities and towns that existed were very small and crude in comparison to the eastern cities like New York, Boston and Philadelphia. Outside of San Antonio very little remotely resembling say, New Orleans, existed in Texas.

This meant that most of the areas and techniques used by present day bottle collectors are not readily available to Texans. There did exist however a venue of collecting not generally known by the bottle world. It all started at the beach – Padre Island to be exact.
Padre Island is a "barrier" island – a long thin island separated from the mainland by a body of salt water known as the Laguna Madre. Historically it was a continuous island. However, the Port Mansfield channel was cut through the island, dividing it into two parts, North Padre Island, approximately 90 miles long, accessible by car only from the North end and South Padre Island, accessible by car only from the South. (Unknown at the time, the channel cut through the site of a 16th century Spanish galleon shipwreck – but that’s another story.) For approximately 70 of those miles a four-wheel drive vehicle was necessary, so I drove a reliable and trusty International Harvester Scout. Even on weekends one could travel for miles without seeing another vehicle.

Treasure from the beach: At the bottom is a mahogany burl, three small glass floats fro Portugal, large glass float from Japan and SCA glass in ships lanterns.

In the early 1960’s I was an avid beachcomber and shell collector. In the sea drift would be seashells, weird-shaped driftwood, glass floats and bottles from all over the world – Japan, Argentina, Mexico and many other countries. The bottles were generally liquor bottles but many were in interesting colors and shapes that were not sold in American stores, and I picked up those of interest. One day while prowling through the sand dunes however, I stumbled across a very old bottle – a bottle I later learned to call a ladies leg. It was the start of a quest that eventually lead to Bagdad – no not that Baghdad – the one on the river the Mexicans call the Rio Bravo and Americans call the Rio Grande. Here’s the rest of the story.

The bottle I found is a dark green, two-piece mold, sand-blasted ladies leg with long, stretched-out bubbles. It intrigued me and I determined to find more. Prowling the Padre Island dunes more frequently now, I found other antique bottles. The bottles would generally be in the "flats" – areas from which the wind had scoured the sand. Storms and the prevailing winds would restructure the dunes and the flats so that nearly continually there was new territory to traverse. Generally the bottles were few and far between and one could easily walk 3-4 miles without finding anything of great interest. Gradually the search widened to include Washington Beach.
Washington Beach is a beach that stretches south from the mouth of the Rio Grande. The road one took to go from Matamoras (the Mexican city located immediately opposite Brownsville, Texas) to Washington Beach – was approximately 16 miles of rutted, pot-holed former pavement that was in such condition that one could usually drive only 10-15 miles per hour on it. The highway terminated on the beach about 10 miles south of the Rio Grande. In those days, using a 4

wheel drive vehicle you could explore approximately 70-80 miles south, about as far as a tank of gas plus a 5 gallon reserve could generally take you. At times the driving would be through thick sand and at one point you had to drive over the remains of two rock jetties that had once contained a channel that ran from the Gulf of Mexico to the Mexican Laguna Madre. You could drive for miles and not encounter anyone other than the occasional truckload of Mexican beach fishermen. These crews would run seines hundreds of yards long, using only a small boat and sheer muscle power. Although the beach was virtually deserted the sand dunes were full of indications of shipwrecks and one could find pieces of wrecks, complete with square bronze nails, and of course the main prize: antique bottles. Among these were case gins, three piece mold black glass bottles, sun colored amethyst, two piece mold beers, and even the occasional pontiled bottle. Many of these bottles had apparently been exposed to the drifting sand for some time. They had a sand-blasted appearance that was visually and tactically evident.

It was about this time that a newspaper article mentioned that at one time a town had existed at the mouth of the Rio Grande. The origins of the town reputedly went back to the infamous pirate Jean Lafitte who early residents referred to as Don Juan Lafitte and who reported vast sums of money buried in the sand hills near the village. During the 1850’s Bagdad (also spelled Baghdad as in the capitol of Iraq) was described by a contemporary, William Neale, who ran stage lines from Matamoros to Bagdad, as a "wretched place of reed huts, plastered with mud and oyster shells giving shelter to a dozen Mexican families." 1
The U.S. Civil War, however, brought many changes to Bagdad. Bagdad did not have a natural harbor and moreover a sandbar at the mouth of the river prevented vessels with much draft from entering. Thus ships delivering or picking up cargo would have to stand off shore while lighters carried the cargo and/or passengers back and forth. Nevertheless Bagdad did have one unique advantage. One of the first acts of President Lincoln upon the declaration of war was to issue a proclamation blockading the entire coast line of the Southern states. The blockade was not completed until the second year due to a lack of ships. By then the South was experiencing increasing difficulty in selling its cotton to Europe to fund the war. Mexico remained neutral in the war and by treaty the Rio Grande was to be open to ships of all countries. Moreover, the bar at the mouth of the river prevented Union war ships from going up river and Federal troops controlled the

Brownsville area for only very brief periods of time. So the one-time village became the principal shipping outlet for Confederate cotton.
Virtually overnight the village was transformed into a boisterous boom town. Again William Neale: "The cosmopolitan city of Bagdad was a veritable Babel, a Babylon, a whirlpool of business, pleasure and sin…A common laborer could easily gain from $5 to $6 per day while a man who owned a skiff could make from $20 to $40…The Gulf for 3 or 4 miles out, was literally a forest of masts. Ten stages were running daily from Matamoros to Bagdad. Numerous shanties had been constructed on the sands, out of un-planed boards. Some of these shanties were hotels, some billiard-saloons, and other grogshops. The beach was piled high with cotton bales going out, and goods coming in. The stores were numerous and crowded with wares. Teamsters cracked their whips in the streets and horsemen galloped hither and thither. The panorama looked like some magic scene which might have been improvised in a night." At its height, Bagdad, and its sister city, Clarksville, across the river on the Texas side, had a population of 25,000 plus, mostly in Bagdad.
Many have commented on the activity at Bagdad. Admiral Semmes, the famous commander of the Confederate warship the Alabama, after that ship was sunk, returned to the Southern states by way of Bagdad and reported: "Ox and mule teams from the Texas side of the river were busy hauling the precious staple of the Southern states (cotton); which puts all this commerce in motion, to Bagdad for shipment; and anchored off that mushroom village, I counted, as I landed, no less than sixty sails of ships – nearly all of them foreign."
In addition to the prosperity brought about by Confederate trade, still more activity came about as a result of the French invasion of Mexico in 1862, with Bagdad serving as a shipping point and at one time the Imperialist forces of Napoleon II held the port. The backwash of a hurricane which hit Louisiana in 1867 destroyed much of Bagdad and with the end of both the US Civil War and the defeat of the French Imperialists, the city never recovered.

On previous trips to Washington beach we had turned right upon entering the beach and gone as far as we dared before turning around. This time we turned left and headed for Bagdad. Talk about a real ghost town. Not a single building, street, foundation or any other visible evidence existed of what was once a rather large, thriving city. The only sign of habitation were 2-3 shacks where the beach fishermen lived. We did however, find bottle shards scattered along the banks of the river. In those days I knew nothing of steel probes and the like but random digging did produce a few more or less complete bottles and the fisherman wandered over to see what was happening. We explained our quest and they indicated that they had a few whole bottles we could buy or trade for, if we wished. We wished!
The hedonistic life reported in Bagdad was borne out by the bottles. Most prevalent were clay ales and other liquor bottles. There were however several pontils – among these on various trips were boot blacking, mustard, cologne and Naptha Syrup. We resolved to come back again (and again). Several trips had about the same results.
There are undoubtedly hundreds of privy pits that still remain in the location, but how to find them? As mentioned there are absolutely no indication of streets, building locations etc. Nothing but acres of empty (except for Jean Lafitte’s treasure of course) sand dunes can be seen. Today, the Rio Grande doesn’t even reach the Gulf of Mexico. Due to many dams up river and drought along many of its tributaries the once mighty Rio Grande stops several miles short of the Gulf.
As to Padre Island, much of it is today a National Seashore and even though 4 wheel drive is still a necessity one is seldom out of sight of other people and vehicles and virtually every foot of the island has seen recent human activity.

Author: Carl Young is a retired math teacher who collects almost anything portable. Besides bottles, among his collecting interests are lightning rods and weather vanes, woodworking tools and microscopes. He may contacted by email at: YoungCarlT@aol.com.

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