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STEAMBOATS,
YELLOW JACK, AND THE SIX SISTERS
In 1854 a lighchouse was erected on Spanish Point, on the west bank of the Pascagoula River. Since the river was already marked by the Round Island Lighchouse, the entrance lighthouse was small. Courtesy, Tommy Wixon
The growth of towns and trade on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in the antebellum period (1815-1861) resulted from a process, an invention, and a disease. The urbanization process of the two flanking metropolitan areas of New Orleans and Mobile, the advent of steam power, and the terror of yellow fever combined to produce a string of six “watering places" (resort spas with curative waters) on the Mississippi littoral and simultaneously spawned commercial-industrial villages at bay heads and river mouths. The watering places, known as the “Six Sisters,” were Shieldsboro (Bay St. Louis), Pass Christian, Mississippi City, Biloxi, Ocean Springs, and the Pascagoulas (Hast and West). The major commercialyndustrial village was Handsboro on Back Bay Biloxi, but others of importance were Pearlington, Gainesville, Napoleon, and Logtown on the Pearl, Elder’s Ferry (Moss Point) on the Pascagoula, and Wolftown (Delisle) at the head of the Bay of St. Louis.
Shieldsboro and Pass Christian shared a common origin as watering places in the late colonial period. Creole Catholics tended to favor the first, while Protestant Anglos congregated in the latter. Because of their proximity to New Orleans and the early establishment of sailing sloop service between the two villages and that city, Shieldsboro and Pass Christian were the fastest growing of the Six Sisters in the pre-steamboat era.
In 1789 Thomas Shields secured a Spanish land grant on the west side of the Bay of St. Louis. The village that grew on a portion of that grant became known by two interchangeable names, Bay St. Louis and Shieldsboro, but the latter was the official legal designation until 1875.
In 1820 seven hundred men of the Eighth Regiment, U.S. Infantry, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Zachary Taylor, built a road from the Pearl a River jo the western shore of the Bay ol St. Louis. The medical officer at-tached"to_tlTe”"troop_cantonment at the road's termTnus described a bayside -j strip of homes and summer cottages three or four miles in length with "the little village of Shieldsborough” in the middle. He characterized the area as a long-established summer retreat for the Creole population of New Orleans and the planters of the Natchez District. The small permanent population consisted primarily of descendants of original French and Spanish settlers.
By 1842 Shieldsboro boasted a first-class hotel in addition to a number of boardinghouses. In that same year the hotel owners, in league with a number of public-spirited citizens, raised the funds necessary to extend the town wharf 80 feet farther into the bay so that boats could land in all seasons without any danger of running aground.
All the places of accommodation constructed bathhouses in the water off