Bagdad, FL news and local guide

The deep river also made Bagdad a place to build wooden ships. In 1861 Confederate President Jefferson Davis contracted for a gunboat to be built here, but on March 11, 1862, Confederate forces burned the shipyard, the unfinished gunboat and the mills to keep them out of Union hands. The shipwrights sank their 500-ton dry dock in the river to save it, and it was later raised and used for years in Pensacola. In October 1864 Union troops under Lt. Colonel A. B. Spurling skirmished with Confederates near Bagdad and a week later raided Bagdad and Milton, briefly occupying the town. Soldiers camped in the Thompson House, a Greek Revival home built around 1847 by mill partner Benjamin Woodson Thompson, and left drawings and signatures on its plaster walls. The rebuilt mills shipped lumber across the Atlantic until the Bagdad mill closed in 1939. A post office called Bagdad has operated since 1887. In 1987 the Bagdad Village Historic District, the old mill town with 143 contributing buildings, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the mill site is now a waterfront park. Sources Florida Department of State, Florida Historical Markers: Bagdad Mill Site Florida Department of State, Florida Historical Markers: Thompson House / Skirmish / Blackwater National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places: Bagdad Village Historic District Wikipedia: Bagdad, Florida