During the Civil War, Bagdad and Matamoros were sister cities across the river in neutral Mexico, linked to Texas by a ferry that landed here. The ferry carried Confederate cotton brought from East Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas to Brownsville on to Matamoros, where many speculators and agents competed for cotton to ship to Europe by way of Havana. In exchange they offered vital goods including guns, ammunition, drugs, shoes, and cloth. At Bagdad on the gulf, cotton was loaded from small boats onto ships in the Gulf of Mexico, and the goods crossing here were the South's lifeblood.