RISE AND FALL of the first American Colony in Cuba, La Gloria City, Camaguey. (Photos).
RISE AND FALL OF THE FIRST AMERICAN COLONY IN CUBA, LA GLORIA CITY, CAMAGUEY.
On October the 9th, 1899, Engineer J C Kelly, along with a group of surveyors, engineers and his assistant N O Neville, landed at a spot on Camagüey’s northern coast, forty miles west of Port Nuevitas, sent by the Cuban Land and Steamship Company. This group of Americans worked for months in the division into lots of vast territories that they called Valley of Cubitas, marking the beginning of what was called the establishing of La Gloria Colony, the first American colony in Cuba.
The lands that they chose included a wide band of land, from the outskirts of the Sierra de Cubitas to the sea, bordering on the west with the Maximo River, where the farms Las Mercedes, Rincon Grande, San Agustin, San Jose de Canasi, Laguna Grande, the estate of San Lorenzo de Viaro and other haciendas that comprised thousands and thousands of acres.
Those were the years of the first United States intervention in Cuba, and from its main offices at 32 Broadway, New York City, the Cuban Land and Steamship Company organized the arrival in Cuba of thousands of Americans behind which massive political maneuvers and deceptions were in hiding. On the Cuban Land blue prints – and only there – were beautiful cities with appealing names: La Gloria City, Garden City, City of Piloto, City of Columbia and Port Viaro.
In reality, the place was only a mangrove swamp. Nevertheless, Cuban Land launched an enormous campaign in the States to encourage the colonization of huge Cuban territories. It was said that the company had established an important city in the tropics. There were roads, railroads, hotels, a port, restaurants and theaters, beautifully subdivided streets and all the amenities of a modern city.
The first expedition that arrived had General Paul Van der Voorts of Nebraska at its head, who had been Commander in Chief of the National Corps of the Grand Army of the Republic and later President of Cuban Land and its businessmen in New York. The expedition left New York on December 30, 1899 with E O Smith as Captain of the steamship Yarmouth. There were 200 men and just one woman aboard: Mrs Crandall. The settlers had concentrated in New York from all over the States, from Maine to California, Florida to Minnesota, including Prince Edward Island and British Columbia in Canada.
January 4, 1900 the Yarmouth entered Nuevitas Bay at noon and was greeted by General A L Bresler and Peter E Park, President and Manager of Cuban Land. The 48-mile long journey was made through inlets in three smaller vessels: two Cuban and the Emily B from Lake Ward, Florida, which had arrived two days before with around twenty Floridian farmers, four women among them.
Several of Yarmouth’s passengers did not even go ashore. Others would return from Port Viaro when they saw the deception of which they had been victims. After crossing four miles of gadfly-infested swamps, only 160 members of that expedition would reach the illusory Gloria City. Led this time by Colonel Thomas H Maginnis of Philadelphia, a former US Army officer and war veteran, they put up tents and, on the evening of January 9, they camped at the glade in which their future city was going to be built. Around 300 people slept there that night including around 50 Cuban laborers and more than 50 American employees of Cuban Land that had been on site for several weeks, the Yarmouth settlers and a few adventurers from all ports of the Gulf who had arrived in sailboats and other small vessels.
The Yarmouth’s first expedition included four medical doctors, a lawyer, an editor, some pencil-pushers, several merchants, accountants, machinists, mechanics, masons, carpenters, Army veterans, ex-convicts, a clergyman from Georgia, the Reverend A E Sedom, Judge Groesveck of Washington, DC, Dr WP Pearce from Hoopeston, Illinois, farmers, adventurers and fortune seekers.
William Stokes, died in 1974 was the last original american in La Gloria City.
In the following months there were more expeditions of the Yarmouth and other vessels to the Camagüey coast to settle on the lands sold by Cuban Land in the States. The settlers arrived in Cuba with their children, wives and elders.
During the early years thousands of American farmers came to La Gloria City encouraged by false promises. Thousands also turned right back when they discovered the deception. Only the boldest or those who could not return decided to stay in the Valley of Cubitas.
Without resources or roadways, or a port from where to export their goods, and choked by laws that banned the entrance of their produce in US ports La Gloria City was doomed to disappear.
The core group that established La Gloria City were the American farmers. Hard working, enterprising people who started from scratch plowing a lot of land purchased from Cuban Land. Concealed under the guise of settlers there were also ex-convicts, wanderers, gunslingers, gamblers, drunkards, sexually and financially frustrated men, crooks and adventurers of all kinds.
Those who decided to stay kept five and ten acre parcels and planted fruit and vegetables, giving origin to a vast cultivated zone and to an impressive community, a real feat of strength and courage given the forces that loomed against La Gloria City.
In 1914, La Gloria City and the Valley of Cubitas in general reached its peak. Its inhabitants were thousands of Americans and many Germans, Poles, English, Swedes, Danes, Italians and other nationalities. La Gloria City had a courtroom, a police station, a rural mounted guard post, a Town Hall, post and telegraph station, a telephone line from Port Viaro to La Gloria, a school, a library, electric power, shops, inns, barbershops, dairies, bakeries, pharmacies, blacksmith shops, photographers, artisans, doctors, carpenters and masons.
There was a soap factory, a broom factory and two picturesque two-story Hotels with lush gardens and bay windows, rugs, fine crystal and china and silk drapes. A direct, paved road was built under Engineer Kelly’s direction. It started at Port Viaro, went across La Gloria’s Central Avenue and continued toward the Cubitas Range, in search of Camagüey City. Bridges made of concrete and wood beams crossed the streams. Old Mr Louis from Boston made shiny shoes for the ladies and cowboys with the hundreds of lasts brought with him.
On one side of the town a small sugar mill was built for the manufacturing of sugar and molasses. A printing shop distributed a twice-a-week newspaper, The Cuban Americans as well as books and publications of interest to the community. Englishman Mr Weake brewed ale and black beer. There were services at two churches: one Methodist and the other Episcopalian. A Catholic mass was said on the first Sunday of each month by Father Hildebrand of Palm City, a German city about twelve miles from La Gloria. There were Odd Fellows and Rebekah Lodges. The houses were built from mahogany and cedar, shapely and spacious. The streets were neat and shaded by Poinciana trees. A twelve musician orchestra (five women and seven men) provided the entertainment at parties with violins, violas, brass and drums. Citrus and vegetables were harvested and goods were imported from New York through the Nuevitas port. A mule-drawn tramway with wheels and rails made of sabicu wood made the journey from La Gloria City to New Port, while the steamship La Gloria served both as a means of transport and leisure from the coast to the keys.
William Stokes graveyard, the last original american that remained in Gloria City until his death in 1974.
Then, the gradual descent.
In 1932 a huge hurricane swept through Camaguey devastating the citrus and sugar crops and destroying the dreams of the thousand or so colonists in La Gloria City.
Most sold up and left.
Among the wreckage was the town’s Protestant church.
More than 80 years later, the groundwork for a new one is only now getting under way.
Built on the original site with funding from Jacksonville, Florida, churchgoers in La Gloria see it as a fitting legacy to this uniquely American corner of the Cuban countryside.
It was a sad but beautiful life lived by the inhabitants of La Gloria City, a city that became a ghost town of the tropics.
Agencies/Enrique Cirules/BBCMundo/Internet Photos/YouTube/ Arnoldo Varona/ TheCubanHistory.com
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