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Gulf Hills, Mississippi is an unincorporated community in Jackson County, situated along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, just south of Interstate Highway 10, bordered by St. Martin to the west, Latimer to the north, and Ocean Springs to the south. Most Gulf Hills businesses and residences have Ocean Springs postal addresses. The area was initially known as Bayou Puerto, and was an isolated, primarily Roman Catholic settlement formed in the mid-1800s, whose residents were employed almost exclusively in the seafood industry, with a few of its black residents produced charcoal for local consumption. There was very little slavery in the Bayou Puerto region, as its inhabitants existed at the subsistence level. During the Civil War, there were no Union incursions into the area, nor was there any record of the area being occupied by Federal troops, although some of its male residents served in the Confederate military. In the 1920s, wealthy investors from Chicago and New York began buying up land in the area for winter resorts, which became known as Gulf Hills, which was incorporated in 1925, although later unincorporated. Stars like Judy Garland, Elvis Presley, Mary Ann Mobley, and Gary Collins adopted the resort as a retreat, and Mafia bosses came there regularly until the 1970s. Today, most of those in Gulf Hills are year-round residents.

 

 

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