DEDEAGATCH, officially known as Alexandroupolis, a sea port of Western Thrace in the Hebros province, 10 m. N.W. of the Maritsa estuary, on the Gulf of Enos, an inlet of the Aegean sea. Pop. about 3,000, Greeks and Armenians. A monastic community of Dervishes, of the Dede sect, which was established here in the 15th century, shortly after the Turkish conquest, gave to the place its name. Until 1871 Dedeagatch was a mere cluster of fisher men's huts. Then settlers attracted by the possibilities of trade in the products of the valonia oak forest nearby gathered here. In 1884 it was made a sanjak. In 1889 the Greek archbishopric of Enos was transferred to Dedeagatch. On the opening, in 1896, of the Constantinople-Salonica railway, a large proportion of the transit trade which Enos, situated at the mouth of the Maritza, had acquired, was diverted to Dedeagatch, and an era of unprec edented prosperity began; but when the railway connecting Bur gas on the Black sea with the interior was opened, in 1898, Dedeagatch lost all it had won from Enos. Owing to the lack of shelter in its open roadstead, the port has not become the great commercial centre which its position otherwise qualifies it to be. It is, however, one of the chief outlets for the grain trade of the Adrianople, Demotica and Xanthi districts. In the Balkan War of 1913 the town was occupied for a time by Greeks but later handed to Bulgaria. In 1915 when Bulgaria annexed the coastal plains from the Maritsa to the Struma, Dedeagatch became per manently Bulgarian until 1918. After the collapse of Bulgarian opposition in 1918 the town was used for the concentration of British troops against the Turkish frontier. When the Peace Treaty drew the Bulgarian frontier along the mountains north of the coastal plains Dedeagatch fell to Greece. After the treaty of Lausanne the Greek frontier was withdrawn from the Chatal j a lines to the Maritsa river. Dedeagatch became a frontier town and Enos fell to Turkey.