The Baltimore and Ocean City Railroad Company
railroad · active 1906–1908
Company incorporated under Maryland's public general laws and given extended privileges by Chapter 767 of the Acts of 1906. Chapter 74 of the Acts of 1908, approved 10 March 1908, repealed and re-enacted section 6 of that act so that the company could "operate steamship lines between Baltimore city and ports on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and to construct and operate such lines of road at each terminus of such steamship lines" with the consent of Baltimore's Mayor and City Council and of the county commissioners concerned — in effect converting a promised through railroad into a boat-and-spur enterprise of the kind the Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic already ran. It is the only Ocean City matter in the whole 1908 session. No evidence has been found that it laid track.
In the record (1)
1908 · 1908-03-10
Chapter 74 of 1908 — the only Ocean City act of the session — lets the Baltimore and Ocean City Railroad Company run steamships as well as trains.
The 1908 General Assembly sat from 1 January to 30 March and passed exactly one act touching Ocean City by name. Chapter 74 repealed and re-enacted section 6 of Chapter 767 of 1906, the act extending the privileges of "The Baltimore and Ocean City Railroad Company, incorporated under the Public General Laws of this State," so that the company "shall have the power to operate steamship lines between Baltimore city and ports on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, and to construct and operate such lines of road at each terminus of such steamship lines as may be approved by the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore city and the County Commissioners of each county through which such roads may run." Approved 10 March 1908. It is a paper railroad — the campaign has found no evidence it laid a rail — but it is the third scheme in twenty years to promise Ocean City a direct line to Baltimore, and the 1908 amendment quietly converts it into a boat-and-spur enterprise of the kind the B.C.&A. was already running. Nothing else in Volume 483 of the session laws mentions the town: no charter amendment, no bond issue, no sea-wall follow-up to Chapter 658 of 1904, and Ocean City appears nowhere in the volume's index except under this company's name.
Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway
Source · checked 2026-08-06