Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company

In the record (5)

1. 1916

   The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company installs a modern plant and switchboard at Ocean City, serving about a hundred subscribers.

   *Democratic Messenger*, 22 July 1916, "BIG TELEPHONE IMPROVEMENT — The Ocean City Subscribers Are Delighted With New C. & P. Telephone Service": "The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company has installed a modern telephone plant and switchboard, which furnishes service to approximately one hundred subscribers in the town ... thus giving this city a system equal to that of any place of its size in the State." The commercial force under district manager H. W. Carty was in Ocean City canvassing for more subscribers. In March the same paper had recorded C. & P. buying out the old company's lines, rights and franchises across Worcester County, where "telephone communication between Pocomoke, Snow Hill, Berlin, Ocean City, Newark, Girdletree and Stockton has been very difficult."

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

2. 1920 · 1920-07-23

   Before the Public Service Commission in July 1920 the telephone company said it would like to discontinue the Ocean City exchange, which cost more than it earned.

   In rate-case testimony reported by the Annapolis Evening Capital: "[We] could not possibly charge these people in accordance with the cost; nor could we reduce the price of service any lower than we have done, because that only means some other part of the State would be paying the cost. We would like to discontinue Oxford and Ocean City and some other exchanges that cost more money than we receive, but the people there would not stand it; and besides, those communities have a right to grow." A resort of 711 winter residents that filled with thousands every summer was, to a utility, a losing exchange kept open under protest. Note the last clause, which is the whole 1920s Ocean City argument in nine words: "those communities have a right to grow."

   Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

3. 1921

   Naomi K. Workman, the Ocean City telephone operator who worked the switchboard on crutches for fifteen hours through the 1920 storm, is awarded the Theodore N. Vail medal.

   "Miss Naomi K. Workman, a cripple who can only walk with the aid of crutches, remained on duty at the telephone office at Ocean City, Md., for fifteen hours during the worst storm experienced there in many years. This storm was the cause of damage estimated at $250,000. The boardwalk was ruined and several houses were completely demolished, the basement and the first floor of practically every house in the town being under water. The Coast Guard was unable to make its customary patrol and the water supply was broken and the electric light plant put out of service. In spite of the fact that the house in which the telephone exchange is located was surrounded by water and the foundations were in danger of being washed out, Miss Workman continued to operate the switchboard during the entire storm and completed many emergency calls for help from the flooded districts." The storm is dated 4 February 1920. Two other Maryland operators were honoured, from Baltimore and Cambridge. The medals - bronze, designed by Adolph A. Weinman, who designed the dime and the half-dollar then in circulation - were presented in Baltimore in December 1921, and the Cambridge account records that of the three "that of Miss Workman stands out because of the fact that she is a cripple and can walk only with the aid of crutches." The citation is also the most complete inventory of the February 1920 storm's damage the campaign has found in a single place.

   Ocean City BoardwalkNaomi K. Workman

   Source · checked 2026-08-10

4. 1931 · 1931-01-15

   "A submarine cable was installed across Sinepuxent Bay at Ocean City" — the telephone company's 1930 construction report, printed in January 1931.

   The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company's annual Maryland construction summary, carried in The Republican of Oakland on 15 January 1931, lists new toll cables between Baltimore and Harrisburg, Baltimore and New York, Cumberland and Frostburg, Annapolis and Baltimore, Hagerstown and Middletown — and then: "A SUBMARINE CABLE WAS INSTALLED ACROSS SINEPUXENT BAY AT OCEAN CITY." Maryland telephone users made 318,921,000 calls during the year, 4,086,000 more than in 1929.

   A one-line item at the far western end of the state, and it is the only piece of physical infrastructure built at Ocean City that the whole 1931 corpus records. The town crossed to the mainland by a bridge in 1916 and by wire again in 1930-31; the campaign has been carrying the Sinepuxent Telephone Company since the 1900s and has never had a dated cable before.

   Source · checked 2026-08-10

5. 1939 · 1939-04-18

   From 1939 the telephone operator in Ocean City could set off the fire alarm herself

   The minute of 18 April 1939: 'Ordinance passed to have C&P Telephone Co put in alarm plug in in Central office so operator could set off alarm.' On 3 March the council had resolved to buy a new American LaFrance Foamite pumper for $8,500 and the old truck, in three annual payments; notes for $2,833 each were signed by the mayor and treasurer on 23 May, the machine to start 1 July at 6 per cent. In December the town granted the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company a franchise ordinance for its poles and conduits, section 3 of which reserved space on one crossarm or in one duct, free of charge, 'for the purpose of carrying wires of any fire alarm or police telegraph system owned and maintained by said City'.

   Fourteen years after the fire that took the downtown, Ocean City's fire alarm finally stopped depending on somebody running to it. The town put the switch in the one building that was staffed all night and never closed - and then wrote free wire-space for it into the telephone company's franchise, which is a small town making certain the thing can never be taken away.

   American LaFrance Foamite Inc.Harold J. RayneArchie DavisT. J. Moore

   Source · checked 2026-08-11