Maryland State Roads Commission

government

The state highway authority that built the road to Ocean City and, from 1916, the bridge onto the island. Chapter 665 of 1916 authorized and requested it to build and maintain an iron, steel or concrete bridge across Sinepuxent Bay "as a part of the State Roads system." Its chairman F. H. Zouck and chief engineer Shirley selected the site in May 1916; it advertised the fill across the bay for sealed bids in October 1916; and it condemned the right of way for the Berlin-to-Ocean City state road that autumn. Offices at 601 Garrett Building, Baltimore.

In the record (57)

1916
Senator Orlando Harrison secures a $200,000 appropriation for a concrete bridge at Ocean City — arguing that seven or eight hundred automobiles a day already reach the town in summer.
The Baltimore *News*, reprinted in the *Democratic Messenger* of 1 April 1916: Harrison secured $200,000 for a concrete bridge at Ocean City, "being the estimated cost of such a bridge as furnished by State Roads Engineer Shirley." At a conference of senators in the Governor's office he argued "conclusively that it was not a Worcester County matter" but that the bridge was badly needed as part of the State Roads system, "the present railroad bridge being insufficient to accommodate travel, and always dangerous because of the [heavy] train service over it. From every section of Maryland hundreds of automobiles come to Ocean City, as many as seven or eight hundred a day, most any Sunday during the Summer. They come from Easton, Cambridge, Salisbury and other towns in great numbers, and it is for this traffic that the bridge is to be built." In his own August letter Harrison set out the history: he had first offered a bill for $75,000, was told to abandon it for two years because of the state of the treasury, reintroduced it in the winter of 1916, got Chief Engineer Shirley to sound the bay at Ocean City, and found the true cost would run from $75,000 to $200,000 depending on what the federal navigation engineers demanded. The money came from an $850,000 bond bill he introduced covering roads and bridges, the Maryland Agricultural College building and three armories.
Orlando Harrison Henry G. Shirley
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1916
The State Roads Commission picks the bridge site at the end of May 1916: about three hundred yards north of the railroad bridge, landing at the foot of Worcester Street.
The Cambridge *Daily Banner* of 2 June 1916, "SITE SELECTED FOR OCEAN CITY BRIDGE": F. H. Zouck, chairman of the State Roads Commission, H. G. Shirley, its chief engineer, and Col. John Biddle of the War Department went to Ocean City to choose the site. "It is pretty well understood that the bridge will be constructed about three hundred yards North of the railroad bridge, and will enter Ocean City at the foot of Worcester Street, which is one square South of the new railroad station at Ocean City. Some of the people wanted the bridge to cross the bay further up, but the cost of building across such a wide reach would be so much [greater]." The county delegation that went down to argue the placing: Wm. D. Corddry, J. Edward White, Harris Corddry and M. T. Hargis of Snow Hill; Senator Harrison of Berlin; Walter B. Miller of Salisbury. The approach from the bayside was to be tied into the existing macadam.
F. H. Zouck Henry G. Shirley Orlando Harrison
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1916
The whole Worcester County board of commissioners goes to Annapolis in February 1916 to plead the Ocean City bridge before the Senate Finance Committee.
The *Democratic Messenger* of 4 March 1916, under the head "Working For The Ocean City Bridge": the county commissioners went before the Finance Committee of the State Senate in the committee room of Senator Harrison, with their counsel J. Edward White, Esq. Named as present: E. W. McMaster, W. D. Corddry, N. J. Winbrow, E. Layton, Marion T. Hargis, Edward S. Furbush and William H. Purnell. Harrison — chairman of the Senate Committee on Roads and Highways — had introduced his bridge bill in the first week of the session. The paper's verdict: "While this has not yet become a law, and no specific appropriation may get through, yet it is conceded that it will be [made easier] that the State Roads Commission will build the Ocean City Bridge."
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Orlando Harrison
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1916 · 1916-04-18
Chapter 665 of 1916 authorizes and requests the State Roads Commission to build an iron, steel or concrete bridge across Sinepuxent Bay at Ocean City.
Approved 18 April 1916 by Governor Emerson C. Harrington. The act recites that a system of good roads has already been completed connecting Ocean City with the rest of the Eastern Shore and Baltimore City, that it is "eminently desirable in view of the growing size, importance and popularity of Ocean City as the only watering place on the Atlantic Coast in Maryland that the means of access thereto be made easy, safe and convenient," and directs the Commission to build and thereafter maintain the bridge "as a part of the State Roads system" and "as soon after the passage of this Act as practicable," connecting Ocean City with the state roads laid out for Worcester County. The act carries no appropriation figure of its own — the money came out of a separate roads-and-bridges bond bill.
This is the paper the whole 'Ocean City bridge of 1916' rests on. It is an authorization, not an opening: the statute asks for a bridge, it does not deliver one.
Orlando Harrison
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1916 · 1916-08-16
About a hundred people crowd the Atlantic Hotel on 16 August 1916 for the federal hearing on where to put the bay bridge; Major Oaks approves the state's line and orders a 100-foot channel.
The U.S. Engineer's Office at Wilmington, Del., advertised in the *Messenger* that, application having been made for approval of plans for a bridge across Sinepuxent Bay at Ocean City, a public hearing would be held at the Atlantic Hotel, Ocean City, at 9 a.m. on 16 August 1916. The *Messenger* of 19 August reports the outcome: Major Oaks of the War Department held the hearing, about one hundred persons attended, and "it was made known that it was the unanimous desire of the Ocean City people that the bridge be built, and as early as possible. The only difference of opinion was the location of the bridge. Some desired it well up the beach, while others thought it should be located near the site of the present railroad bridge." Oaks approved the location selected by the Maryland State Roads Commission, "which location paralleled the railroad bridge, entering the city at Worcester Street, one square above the railroad bridge. The bridge will be built of concrete and will be constructed solid from shore to channel, leaving a channel of 100 feet."
A solid causeway with a hundred-foot gap in it. The bay was being narrowed by the same act that opened the town to cars — the first of the century's many trades of water for road.
Atlantic Hotel
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1916 · 1916-12-30
The bridge is bid, re-awarded and still unbuilt when 1916 ends: on 30 December the chairman of the State Roads Commission writes Harrison that work will start "next week."
The State Roads Commission advertised the job in October: "CONTRACT No. WO-[1]. WORCESTER COUNTY. Sealed proposals for the following: Fill across Sinepuxent Bay between end of State Road and Ocean City, approximately [—] cubic yards, will be received by the State Roads Commission at its offices, 601 Garrett Building, Baltimore, Maryland, until 12 M., on the 14th day of November, 1916." Ordered by the Commission on 4 October 1916; F. H. Zouck, Chairman, Lyon H. Wilson, Secretary. Ocean City had also been advertised for on the land side: in October a State Roads condemnation jury was summoned to meet on Mrs. Sarah Kenton Taber's land on 23 October 1916 for the road "leading from Berlin, in Worcester County, Maryland, to the Sinepuxent Bay and Ocean City," on plans approved by H. D. [H. G.] Shirley, Chief Engineer. Then, in the *Messenger*'s last issue of the year, under "Getting Ready to Build New Ocean City Bridge — Work Will Start At Once," Zouck's letter of 30 December 1916 to Senator Harrison at Berlin: "I have your letter of the 3rd inst., in which [you say] that the people of Ocean City are very much disappointed that the work has not been awarded for the approaches to the bridge. In replying thereto, I beg to advise you that the low bidder, Mr. Rich, could not furnish bond, and as his time limit expired last week, we, therefore, have awarded it to the next lowest bidder, F. B. Beasman Co. They expect to start work next week, and have agreed to do it within the original time limit."
This is the correction 1916 owes the registry. The bay bridge is dated 1916 because that is the year it was authorized, funded, sited, federally approved and put out to bid — but on 31 December 1916 not a yard of it had been built. The automobile era at Ocean City starts on paper in 1916 and in concrete in 1917.
F. H. Zouck Orlando Harrison Henry G. Shirley
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1918
The bay bridge does not open in 1918: the county levy still pays the Ocean City Bridge Company, and the State legislature refunds it money.
Four independent lines of 1918 evidence say the State Roads bridge across Sinepuxent Bay -- authorised by Ch. 665 of 1916, contracted 30 December 1916, and still unfinished through 1917 -- did not open in 1918 either. (1) The Worcester County levy printed in the Messenger of 13 and 20 July 1918 carries, under BRIDGES AND FERRIES, "Ocean City Bridge Co. $1,300" -- the toll company that ran the old wooden crossing, paid MORE than the $1,200 it drew in 1917 and the $500 it drew in 1913. (2) The 1918 session of the General Assembly (Session Laws vol. 486, Ch. 200, p. 501; index p. 1127) appropriated a refund of $10.93 to the "Ocean City Bridge Company" -- a live company still transacting with the State. (3) In March 1918 the State Roads Commission's programme for connecting the roads through incorporated towns allotted Ocean City $6,000, and Senator Orlando Harrison was still summoning the county to Annapolis to get road and bridge money appropriated. (4) When the Commissioners petitioned the Commission on 30 November 1918, now that "the ending of the war releases materials and labor," they asked for the gaps at Snow Hill and Pocomoke -- and named no opening at Ocean City. The best secondary account available (Bunk Mann's "Vanishing Ocean City") dates the opening of the State Roads Bridge to 4 July 1919. Nothing in 222 pages of 1918 Maryland newspaper text contradicts that.
Ocean City Bridge Company Orlando Harrison
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1918
A trustee's sale reveals the State took 6.2 of the 9.9 acres of the Taber "Hommock" opposite Ocean City for the bridge.
A sale notice run in the Messenger through July 1918 describes land "lying on the westerly side of Synepuxent Bay, opposite Ocean City, called 'Hommock,' which was conveyed to the said Sarah E. Taber by George W. Purnell, trustee, by deed dated the 20th of June, 1898 ... except so much thereof as was condemned by the State of Maryland at the instance of the State Roads Commission, under proceedings instituted in Case No. 5 on the Miscellaneous Docket of the October Term, 1916, of the Circuit Court for Worcester County; said deed from said trustee calling for 9 and 9-10 acres, more or less, and said proceedings of condemnation taking 6 and 2-10 acres, more or less; leaving 3 and 7-10 acres." The remainder is bounded by "a lot lying near the westerly end of the railroad bridge and belonging to The Farms Company." The same notice offered "lot No. seven (7) on the original plat of Ocean City." This is the mainland end of the bay bridge, taken by eminent domain from the family of Stephen Taber -- the man who patented the beach and sold the lots that made the town in 1875 -- to build the road that would end its dependence on his railroad.
Stephen Taber George W. Purnell
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1918 · 1918-03-09
The State Roads Commission's plan for carrying the state highways through Maryland's incorporated towns allots Ocean City $6,000.
In March 1918 the Commission endorsed the Municipal Congress of Maryland's plan for improving the state highways through incorporated towns and asked the legislature for $675,000. The schedule printed in the Messenger of 9 March 1918 gave, among many: Worcester Co. -- Snow Hill $25,000, Ocean City $6,000, Pocomoke City $15,000; against Salisbury $25,000, Cambridge $25,000, Easton $25,000, Crisfield $30,000, Cumberland $35,000. Senator Orlando Harrison had written to every mayor in the county: "I hope you will be present and have every member of your City Council with you, and every good road man in your section," for the joint hearing of the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees at Annapolis on Wednesday 6 March. Ocean City's $6,000 is the smallest allotment of any incorporated Worcester town -- the same relative position it held in the 1917 Liberty Loan -- and it is the paving that would meet the bridge.
Orlando Harrison F. H. Zouck Henry G. Shirley
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1918 · 1918-04-06
Maryland's road lobby argues for the state highway budget on the ground that Germans might land an army on the Eastern Shore.
The Messenger of 6 April 1918, reporting the case put to the Governor and the legislature for maintaining and completing the state road system: the enemy might choose the peninsula as "the most vulnerable point on the Atlantic Seaboard: that if they can succeed in landing their army at this point they will be able to spread their forces on the entire peninsula, and, still further spreading out, can attack Wilmington, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington. The menace is fully installed in the Governor's mind. It is fully installed in the minds of the State Roads Commission ... It has been a recognition of the fact that Maryland may be called upon to repel a German invasion, and that improved public roads are necessary to prevent this." In 1917 the War Department had rejected the Worcester dunes as a proving ground because they were too exposed to a hostile fleet; in 1918 that same exposure is the argument for paving the road to them. It is the clearest statement in the record of why the bay bridge and the Berlin road were, in the last year of the war, a strategic question and not just a resort's convenience.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1919
With the Annapolis–Claiborne ferry and the new bridge, Governor Harrington promises Washington a weekend at Ocean City.
The state's new automobile ferry Emerson C. Harrington began running between Annapolis and Claiborne in June 1919, and the Governor said what it was for (Annapolis Evening Capital, 19 June 1919): "We are going to place Baltimore City three hours nearer to the Eastern Shore and to Ocean City and save some 75 miles or more for motor traffic. We are going to open up the Eastern Shore and Ocean City to the tourists of the City of Washington. We are going to make it so that the residents of Washington can leave their places of business after the close of business on Saturday and spend Saturday night and Sunday at Ocean City and arrive back to Washington in time for the opening of their business day on Monday morning." The same paper had already done the arithmetic on 26 March: by the ferry, "the trip from Washington to Ocean City will cover only 139 miles of excellent highway, as compared with the longer course of 250 miles via Elkton." The bridge and the ferry are two halves of one thing — the Sun called the bridge "the last 'link' in the State highway route from the mountains of Western Maryland to the ocean front, the Annapolis-Claiborne ferry being the 'link' that enables the automobilists to cross the bay."
The modern Ocean City weekend — leave Friday night, back Monday morning — is invented here, in a governor's speech, in June 1919.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1919
Senator Orlando Harrison drives the first automobile over the new bay bridge, with the mayor of Ocean City aboard.
The Messenger of 10 May 1919: "Senator Orlando Harrison, Engineer P. E. Burroughs, County Commissioner Boston, Superintendent of Road Construction G. C. Day, and Edward M. Scott, Mayor of Ocean City, were the first to go over the State Bridge in an automobile." The Annapolis Evening Capital of 7 May and the Cambridge Daily Banner of 6 May both date the run to "last Wednesday" — 30 April 1919 — a few days before the bridge was thrown open to the public. Harrison had made the appeal in the 1916 session that got the appropriation, and the paper noted it was "the Senator's especial desire to have present the men who helped to obtain this needed public improvement."
Orlando Harrison
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1919
1,800 feet, a 40-foot electric double-leaf draw, a pagoda-roofed operation house and $125,000.
From the Baltimore Sun's technical description, reprinted in the Democratic Messenger of 12 July 1919 and read here from the page image rather than the OCR: "The bridge is over Sinepuxent Bay and from shore line to shore line is 1,800 feet long, part concrete and part solid roadway. The concrete structure is 220 feet long, covering four waterways of 30 feet each and supporting a draw span of 40 feet. Causeways 800 feet long are at each end of the draw. A heavy bank of oyster shells and stone support the causeways. The bridge itself rests upon six massive concrete piers supported by piling. These piers were built in large coffer dams under great difficulty because of strong tides and ocean surf washing into the bay. The draw is of steel, of the double-leaf lift type, and is operated by electricity … can be opened in less than a minute for the passage of vessels. The roadway is 24 feet wide, admitting three automobiles abreast. A steel and concrete operation house, two stories high, is about midway of the bridge … with an attractive pagoda appearance. The bridge was constructed by the State Roads Commission and cost $125,000." John N. Mackall of Baltimore was chief engineer; P. E. Burroughs, resident engineer for the State at Salisbury, was superintendent of construction and in direct charge of the work.
A pagoda in the middle of Sinepuxent Bay. The bridge that ended the railroad's monopoly on Ocean City was also, briefly, the prettiest thing in the county.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1919 · 1919-05-05
The Sinepuxent Bay highway bridge opens to the public on 5 May 1919 — Ocean City's first automobile crossing.
The Cambridge Daily Banner of 6 May 1919 ran the headline "OCEAN CITY BRIDGE COMPLETED — Public Will be Allowed to Use Same After May 5th — Formal Opening And Celebration on July 4th." The Snow Hill Democratic Messenger of 10 May confirmed it under "O. C. BRIDGE NOW IN USE — Opened to the Public This Week." The Baltimore Sun's account, reprinted in the Messenger of 12 July, states flatly that the bridge "has been in use since May 5th last." This settles a question the campaign has carried since the 1916 pass: the bay bridge authorised by Chapter 665 of 1916 and contracted on 30 December 1916 was not open in 1916, 1917 or 1918. It opened on 5 May 1919, and until that morning the only way to drive into Ocean City was over the railroad company's drawbridge.
Three years and four months from contract to first car. The rail-to-road era does not begin when the state says it will build a bridge; it begins the morning somebody can drive across one.
Ocean City Bridge Company Orlando Harrison
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1919 · 1919-06-15
On 15 June 1919 Worcester County ends its contract with the Ocean City Bridge Company — and stops paying $100 a month to use the railroad bridge.
A notice signed by J. A. Boston, President of the County Commissioners of Worcester County, ran in the Democratic Messenger every week from 17 May to 21 June 1919: "NOTICE is hereby given that after June 15, 1919, the contract now existing between the Ocean City Bridge Company, a Corporation, and the County Commissioners of Worcester County, Maryland, by which provision was made for the use of said bridge by the traveling public, will cease. The new bridge constructed by the State Roads Commission is now open to the public." The Baltimore Sun put the saving at $100 a month "which it paid for the use of the railroad bridge for general traffic." That contract is the arrangement the county had been fighting over since at least 1915, when the Messenger ran "NO TOLLS ON O. C. BRIDGE." The Ocean City Bridge Company, chartered in 1876, ends its forty-three-year role as the town's only way in.
Ocean City Bridge Company
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1919 · 1919-07-04
Ten thousand people and 1,185 automobiles come to Ocean City for the formal opening of the bay bridge on the Fourth of July.
The Mayor and Council of Ocean City invited "all of the citizens of Maryland, Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Virginia" to the dedication. The Baltimore Sun's staff correspondent, reprinted in the Messenger of 12 July: "Dual celebration of the national holiday and of the formal opening of the new State highway bridge across Sinepuxent Bay caused the only seaside resort of Maryland to suddenly bound today from lethargy into as great summer activity as it has ever known. Governor Harrington and about 10,000 other residents of the State cooperated to make the day memorable in the city's history. By actual count, 1,185 automobiles had come into this city at 3 P. M., over the bridge, and 8,000 visitors, about 360 of whom were from Baltimore, by train." The Governor motored over from Cambridge with his family; the Pocomoke City Band announced his two-o'clock arrival with "Maryland, My Maryland" and then led the procession out to the drawkeeper's house, midway of the bridge, where the ceremonies took place. Small evergreen trees had been planted at intervals along the entire length of the bridge; they and a few flags on the drawkeeper's house "were the only decorations." John W. Ennis of Pocomoke called for order. Chief engineer Mackall said the bridge "was the last link in the chain of good roads from Ocean City to Western Maryland."
1,185 cars counted by three in the afternoon, against 8,000 people off the trains. The road had not beaten the railroad yet — but for the first time in Ocean City's history somebody thought the cars were worth counting.
Orlando Harrison John Walter Smith Phillips Lee Goldsborough F. H. Zouck
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1920
Both 1920 acts that would have built new roads toward Ocean City — the Showell link and the Sinepuxent Neck shell road — were vetoed.
Chapter 401 of 1920, "AN ACT to authorize the State Roads Commission of Maryland to construct a concrete road from Showells, Maryland, a point on the main concrete State road, to a point on the concrete road leading from Salisbury to Ocean City at or near St. Martin's Station" — vetoed. Chapter 300, "AN ACT to authorize the State Roads Commission of Maryland and the United States Department of Agriculture to construct a shell road from Trappe Mills, near Berlin, Maryland, to the south end of the Railway Farm, in Sinepuxent Neck, a distance of about seven miles, such shell road to follow the route of the present county road now used and already graded" — vetoed. Showell is the point at which T. Coleman du Pont had offered Maryland four free miles of road from the Delaware line in 1917. Three years on, the Maryland end of that link was still being written into bills and struck out of them.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1920 · 1920-02-05
The February storm submerged the railroad's Sinepuxent bridge and stopped B.C.&A. trains at Berlin — while the year-old State Roads highway bridge stood undamaged.
From the same dispatch: "Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railroad trains stopped yesterday at Berlin and are not running past that point. The railroad's bridge over Sinepuxent Bay is submerged, though it is believed still to be in good condition. The concrete bridge built by the State Roads Commission over the same body of water is still standing and is not known to be damaged." Nine months after the highway bridge opened, the first great test of the two crossings went to the road. This registry's `era:rail-to-road` has no cleaner single sentence in it: in the worst storm anyone at Ocean City could remember, the railroad quit at the mainland and the automobile bridge held.
Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1920 · 1920-04-16
Chapter 382 of 1920 folded Ocean City's beach into the state's Bridge Loan — $250,000 of certificates, with whatever was left after the bridges to "protect Ocean City from the tides."
Approved 16 April 1920, effective 1 June. The Act created "the Bridge Loan of 1920 to the amount of two hundred and fifty thousand ($250,000) dollars," $100,000 dated 15 August 1921 and $150,000 dated 15 August 1922, at not more than 4½ per cent, redeemable on the serial annuity plan in lettered series A through Z between 1924 and 1937. Section 6 directed the proceeds to the State Roads Commission to be spent first on reconstructing dangerous bridges in the State Roads System, then on buying the Hancock, Williamsport, Shepherdstown and Harpers Ferry bridges jointly with West Virginia, "and for the construction of such other public works necessary to the protection of Ocean City beach front, as the State Roads Commission may, in its discretion, deem necessary to protect Ocean City from the tides." Section 7 laid the service on the counties and Baltimore City as a state tax rising from one-thirtieth of a cent per $100 in 1922 to one-fifth of a cent from 1925 through 1937. Ocean City's beach came last in the queue and got no fixed sum — but this is the first time in this registry's record that the State of Maryland accepted, in statute, a standing obligation to hold the beach against the sea.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1922
Senator Orlando Harrison tells the county paper what the 1920 storm did: the front board walk swept away in sections, cottages demolished, and high tides now reaching two hundred feet nearer the ocean-front property than in years past.
Writing to the Democratic Messenger in February 1922 to press the case for state beach protection, Harrison set out the record: "The storm of 1920 swept away large sections of the front board walk, completely demolished some of the cottages and boarding houses, and seriously damaged a great many others, but the citizens of Ocean City with their usual energy and pride in their home town went to work at once and built new cottages, repaired the damaged ones, repaired the board walks at their own expense, and Ocean City is now in better condition from the standpoint of hotel and cottage accommodation than it was before the storm." And then the measurement: "Citizens who have been familiar with the ocean front for thirty years state that the storms have swept away much of the original beach and that the high tides now reach 200 feet nearer the ocean front property than in years past, and that the danger of damage by storm increases each season." He noted that the General Assembly of 1920, at his instigation, had made an appropriation in the Bridge Bond Acts of 1920 for the State Roads Commission to work on the beach front — but that the money would not be available until 1 August 1923. — 1922 RECTIFICATION, 2026-08-10: The text ran on the same day in the Worcester Democrat (Pocomoke City) and the Peninsula Enterprise (Accomac, Va.), and on 17 February in the Milford Chronicle (Del.), as well as in the Democratic Messenger. The Democrat's text reads "Citizens who have been familiar with the Ocean front for **35 years**" where the existing fact has "thirty years." Record as a DataConflict (thirty vs thirty-five years) and cross-reference fact:1922-harrison-runs-a-peninsula-wide-press-campaign. The Democrat's version also names the inland waterway's northern end as "the Isle of Wight Bay on the Delaware coast" rather than Rehoboth.
The town rebuilt its own boardwalk out of pocket after 1920 and then spent 1922 asking Annapolis to stop the ocean.
Ocean City Boardwalk Orlando Harrison
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1922
In March 1922 the State Roads Commission drives the first experimental jetty into the surf at Ocean City — four hundred feet of double piling opposite Somerset Avenue, sixteen men, three weeks.
The Democratic Messenger of 1 April 1922: "Under the supervision of District Engineer P. E. Burroughs, of Salisbury, construction was started on Wednesday of last week by the forces of the State Roads Commission on the new experimental jetty at Ocean City. The site is opposite Somerset avenue, between the Washington Pharmacy and the Ocean City Pier — starting at the building line and running well out into the surf for a distance of approximately 400 feet. The construction consists of the driving of two rows of piling about six feet apart, which are tied together by lateral braces and steel tie cords. The construction is such that the waters may pass through the jetty on ordinary tides or wash over it on high tides without inflicting damage, meanwhile putting a stop to the encroachment of the waves upon the beach surface." It was estimated at about three weeks' work with about sixteen men. "Officials state that the jetty will in no manner interfere with the splendid surf bathing at Ocean City during the seasons." By 20 May the town's own correspondent reported it "being rounded off, and finished up this week. Capt. Lloyd has done good work, and people say, who should know, that already its good results begin to show. The consensus of opinion is, that the next one should be placed above the end of the boardwalk, as the force of all of our storms come from the North-east; also that the jetty should be built before the September storms." — 1922 RECTIFICATION, 2026-08-10: The Worcester Democrat of 1 April 1922 carries the same State Roads Commission story as the Democratic Messenger under the headline "WORK ON NEW JETTY BEGUN AT OCEAN CITY", and says "The State Roads Commission has about **15** men working on the project" — the existing fact says sixteen. It also carries the sentence the existing record lacks: "One jetty only will be constructed at this time as it is only a matter of experiment. If this one proves satisfactory it is said by officials that the jetties will be a very cheap method of protecting the entire frontage of Maryland's only seaside resort." By 16 December the town's own column reports jetties in the plural nearly complete, and by 30 December "practically completed" and holding sand enough "to form a new beach." Add fact:1922-more-than-one-jetty-goes-in and fact:1922-the-jetties-make-a-new-beach to relatedFactRefs.
Ocean City's first piece of hard shore protection, and the town was already arguing about where the second one should go.
Ocean City Boardwalk P. E. Burroughs Orlando Harrison
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1922
The temporary fishing piers that had grown up against the new highway bridge are ordered out of Sinepuxent Bay by 15 April 1922, and a public wharf is promised in their place — on the railroad's land.
The Democratic Messenger of 28 January 1922, under "Ocean City To Build New Pier To Replace Temporary One": after a conference at Ocean City between watermen, their attorneys A. M. Jackson and L. Claude Bailey of Salisbury and District Engineer P. E. Burroughs of the State Roads Commission, the temporary piers built the previous spring were to come down before 15 April. "A new public pier is to be constructed by an Ocean City corporation; probably extending from the land of the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway Company." The army engineers had refused a permanent permit because the State Roads Commission objected to piers landing on its bridge, and on 3 January the owners were notified to remove all landings, pilings, timbers, houses or sheds within fifty feet of the centre line of the State road over Sinepuxent Bay. The paper also complained that "the view of the bridge is practically cut off by a gasoline storage station built on one of the piers." G. W. Rounds, Alvin J. Townsend and Edward C. Evans gave a written guarantee to remove the obstructions, which bought the extension to April. The promised wharf was to serve "fishermen, oystermen, summer visitors who wish to crab and fish, yachting parties, Coast Guard and others."
Three years after the bridge opened, the town's watermen had colonised it — and the state made them get off.
Ocean City Fishing Pier Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway P. E. Burroughs
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1922 · 1922-04-13
Joint Resolution No. 22 of 1922 asks the State Roads Commission to make good on the 1920 promise of a mile of state road inside the limits of Ocean City.
Approved 13 April 1922, the resolution requests the State Roads Commission "to complete as soon as practical" a list of Worcester County roads — Pocomoke to Stockton via Girdletree to Snow Hill, Snow Hill to Public Landing, Snow Hill to Salisbury, Bishop to Bishopville, Berlin to Powellville via Liberty, Trappe Mills to Lower Sinepuxent, Showell to St. Martin's Station, Showell to Gray's Corner — "and to erect one and one-eighth miles of road in the incorporated limits of Berlin, which is equal to the mileage built by the town of Berlin, and one (1) mile in Ocean City, all of which was passed in the session of 1920." The resolution goes on to ask for cheaper methods of building lateral roads, for dangerous culverts to be widened "since the increase in traffic," and recommends "that all revenues from automobile license and trucks and gasoline be applied to the maintenance and widening the roads of Maryland."
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1922 · 1922-04-13
Joint Resolution No. 18 of 1922 orders the State Roads Commission to spend $2,000 of Worcester County road money on dynamite to keep the inlet two miles south of Ocean City from closing.
Approved 13 April 1922, the resolution reads in full: "Resolved, That the State Roads Commission be and is hereby authorized and directed to spend two thousand ($2,000) dollars out of any road funds available from Worcester County's Road Fund, or so much thereof as may be necessary for dynamite to keep open the Inlet and Bay two miles south of Ocean City, that is now threatened to be closed, which promises to be of great value by salting about seventy-five thousand (75,000) acres of oyster bottoms." The volume's index to joint resolutions files it under OCEAN CITY. It is the state of Maryland spending highway money on explosives to hold open a hole the sea had made — and the justification is not navigation or the resort but seventy-five thousand acres of oyster bottom. — 1922 RECTIFICATION, 2026-08-10: The joint-resolution index of the 1922 volume, p. 1721, files No. 18 under the heading **OCEAN CITY** as "To direct State Roads Commission to keep inlet near Ocean City open out of Worcester County Road Fund." That is how the state's own clerk summarised it: not oysters, not navigation — an inlet, kept open, on the county's road money.
Ocean City Inlet & Jetty County Commissioners of Worcester County
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1923
The 1922 experimental jetty is judged a success and an appropriation is passed to build more.
The Ocean City Board of Trade reported in May 1923 that "the jetties for the protection and upbuilding of the beach which have been installed by the State Highways Commission have proved so [success]ful that an appropriation has been passed and money is in hand to increase the number of these valuable buttresses." The 1922 pass documented the first jetty — 400 feet, two rows of piling, opposite Somerset Avenue — going in that April, and the town's correspondent arguing that same May for a second one above the end of the boardwalk before the September storms. This is the state answering.
Ocean City Boardwalk Board of Trade of Ocean City
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1924
The State Roads Commission advertises for 'a timber jetty at the entrance of the Sinepuxent Bay two miles south of Ocean City.'
Notice to Contractors, printed in the Worcester Democrat of 23 August 1924 over the Department of Public Works, State Roads Commission: 'Worcester County.—Cont. Wo-33. For the construction of a timber jetty at the entrance of the Sinepuxent Bay two miles south of Ocean City, will be received by the State Roads Commission, at its offices, 601 Garrett Building, Baltimore, Maryland, until 12 M. on the 2d day of September, 1924, at which time and place they will be publicly opened and read.' Four months after the Governor vetoed the legislature's $50,000, the Roads Commission let the work anyway out of its own highway money — and its own advertisement fixes the distance the registry has argued over since 1920. Two miles, not four.
Four passes of this campaign have hedged 'two miles or four.' The State Roads Commission answers it in its own tender notice, and answers it at two.
Ocean City Inlet & Jetty
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1924
Maryland votes $50,000 for jetties at Ocean City and to keep the 1920 inlet open — and the Governor vetoes it.
Chapter 347 of the Acts of 1924 is 'AN ACT to appropriate a sum of money for repairing and building the jetties in front of Ocean City in Worcester County and for building jetties in front of the inlet south of Ocean City in order to keep the same open.' Against its printed title in the session laws stands one word: '(Vetoed.)' The volume's index of vetoed acts lists it as 'Jetties at Ocean City ...... 347 931'. The Worcester Democrat gives the figure and the politics: the bill was a $50,000 loan sponsored by Senator Orlando Harrison, and 'has been stated by the Baltimore press as part of his share in the bloc formed to defeat the Governor's efforts to keep the tax rate down.' Governor Albert C. Ritchie disapproved more than sixty bills that April, among them Harrison's Snow Hill-to-Public-Landing road as well. This is the clearest statement the registry has that the inlet cut by the storm of February 1920 was still open in 1924 and that the State of Maryland now wanted it kept that way — and would not pay for it.
Four years after a storm did for free what the state had spent fifty years failing to do, Annapolis finally voted money to hold the opening — and the Governor struck it out to protect the tax rate.
Ocean City Inlet & Jetty Orlando Harrison
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1924
Turlington Bros. of Chincoteague win the inlet jetty contract for $1,300 — and the inlet has narrowed from 100 feet to about 20.
Peninsula Enterprise, 4 October 1924: 'TURLINGTON BROS. BUILDING JETTY AT OCEAN CITY, MD. — Turlington Bros., of Chincoteague, Va., have been awarded the contract to settle 1200 30-ft. piling at the inlet at Ocean City, Md., to act as a jetty to prevent the inlet from closing up, which broke through the beach four miles south of Ocean City a few years ago. When the inlet first cut through it was 100 feet wide but it has gradually been getting narrower until it is only about 20 feet wide at the present time. The piling are being put down to prevent the inlet closing entirely. Since this inlet cut through there has been quite a boom to the oyster, fishing and crabbing interests in that section. The contract price for driving the piling is $1300.00.' This is the first measurement of the 1920 inlet the registry has: a hundred feet when it opened, twenty feet four and a half years later, and a Virginia pile-driving firm paid thirteen hundred dollars to stop it healing shut.
about two miles south of the town — the State Roads Commission's tender says two, a Virginia weekly says four
Ocean City Inlet & Jetty
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1925 · 1925-01-10
"The concrete bridge at Ocean City built by the State is a beautiful structure, free to all. The bridge cost about $130,000."
From Senator Harrison's county description in the Worcester Democrat of 10 January 1925, reprinted in the Milford Chronicle of 9 January: "Ocean City which is 8 miles from Berlin via a concrete road, is a most pleasant place for those who seek ocean bathing… The concrete bridge at Ocean City built by the State is a beautiful structure, free to all. The bridge cost about $130,000 and is used by thousands of people from all over the country whenever they visit Ocean City." The bridge opened in July 1919; the campaign has been trying to price it since the 1916 pass.
Six years after it opened, somebody finally put a number on the bridge that ended Ocean City's railroad age — and it is a booster's round number, not a contract price.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1925 · 1925-04-29
The State Roads Commission put the Ocean City highway out to bid for widening — it could not safely carry the Sunday crowds.
Smyrna Times, 29 April 1925, "TO WIDEN OCEAN CITY ROAD — Maryland Roads Commission Find Present Thoroughfare too Narrow": "Steps are being taken to widen the much used Ocean City, Md., highway, which is considered too narrow to safely care for the traffic, especially the Sunday crowds. Bids are now being sought…"
The road built to bring people to the beach had, within a few seasons, brought too many of them.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1925 · 1925-10-24
Ocean City lobbied hard for the Maryland National Guard's state encampment, offering a farm at $50 an acre six miles from the beach.
Worcester Democrat, 24 October 1925, page one. General Reckord inspected the "Genezer tract" near Sinepuxent, ten feet or more above sea level, "in close reach to the bay or ocean… and can be brought very close to Ocean City, by stone road, which Commissioner Mackall says will be built, and by the B. C. & A. railroad. Besides, the purchase price is quoted at the cheap rate of $50 per acre." The Democrat argued the six or seven miles was no objection since "the resort furnishes all the amusements which are really required in a community such as a soldier camp." "Ocean City's claims for the camp were presented by Mayor W. C. McCabe; Dr. C. W. Purnell, president of Ocean City Chamber of Commerce, and Capt. William B. Powell. Hale Harrison, president of the Berlin Chamber of Commerce, acted as spokesman for the delegation." Salisbury sent its Chamber manager, Senator Charles R. Disharoon and fifty others; Snow Hill sent Mayor W. D. Corddry; Pocomoke sent Edward J. Clarke of the Worcester Democrat; Berlin sent Mayor E. E. Burbage and Gen. H. M. Creel, U.S.A., retired. T. Alan Goldsborough came for Caroline County and spoke for the Ocean City site. Rival sites were on Kent Island and the Choptank River.
The whole lower Shore turned out to sell the Guard a sandy farm, on the argument that the soldiers could go to the beach.
Ocean City Chamber of Commerce Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway William W. McCabe Dr. Charles Washington Purnell T. Alan Goldsborough
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1925 · 1925-12-02
In the first days of December the surf broke clean across the island into Sinepuxent Bay — "but, protected by the jetties no damage was done and the resort is intact."
Worcester Democrat, 5 December 1925: a storm raged along the coast "for two days this week, doing much damage to shipping and shore property. Locally besides a depressing effect upon business, no material damage was done… Telephone and telegraph wires and poles suffered, and many could be seen depressed at acute angles, or lying prone on the ground. Pocomoke City, for a short while on Wednesday evening was in total darkness, but light was soon restored. At Ocean City the storm was furious. The surf, at points, broke clear across the land and poured into Sinepuxent Bay, but, protected by the jetties no damage was done and the resort is intact."
Ocean City's jetties did exactly what the State Roads Commission built them to do — four weeks before the town burned down from the inside.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1927
Maryland commits $140,000 to dredge and scour the storm inlet south of Ocean City — five years before the storm that made the real one.
In December 1927 the Maryland State Roads Commission awarded a $100,000 contract to a Baltimore company for dredging in Sinepuxent Bay, and held a hearing on a $40,000 improvement to the Ocean City highway bridge over the bay: "the State Roads Commission of Maryland is at present involved in an expenditure of $140,000 toward the protection and improvement of the natural inlet and the Ocean City resort." The dredging was "a channel 150 feet wide and 4,000 feet long in the Sinepuxent Bay, extending northward from the natural inlet, three miles south of Ocean City." Its purpose was hydraulic: "to direct water on the ebbing tide through the channel of the natural inlet, in an effort to cleanse the inlet of sand deposits which are slowly filling up the inlet channel. At present, without a channel down the bay, the force of the falling tide is not sufficient to cleanse the inlet of deposits. The water passes on down the bay 45 miles where it connects with the sea at Chincoteague Island, Va." The bridge work was the same idea from the other end: Chairman Mackall planned to remove 152 feet of solid fill at each end of the approaches to the existing concrete open bridge and refill under the bridge with dredged material, "not only to safeguard the bridge from severe currents which flow under it, but to allow a greater flow of water to enter Upper Sinepuxent Bay and the Isle of Wight Bay so that this water may be available on ebb tide to scour the natural inlet three miles south of Ocean City of sediment brought in by the flood tide." The money was to come "out of the state appropriation of $150,000, given by the Legislature in 1926 for the protection of the inlet and Ocean City, Md." State Senator Orlando Harrison of Worcester County and Chairman John N. Mackall of the State Roads Commission are named as responsible.
Three years after Governor Ritchie vetoed $50,000 for jetties to keep the inlet open, the state was spending $140,000 to do exactly that — and the engineering logic is the same one that would be applied to the 1933 inlet: build a channel so the ebb tide scours what the flood tide silts up. Ocean City did not learn to keep an inlet open in 1934. It had been paying for the lesson since 1920.
Ocean City Inlet & Jetty Orlando Harrison John N. Mackall
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1929
Ocean City asks the General Assembly for $100,000 — $40,000 of jetties and $60,000 to reopen the inlet three miles below the town — and gets neither.
On 11 February 1929, with the General Assembly sitting, a dispatch datelined Ocean City reported that the town was asking Annapolis for an appropriation of $100,000 'for protective measures against the ocean at this resort and for reopening of the natural inlet three miles below here.' Of that, $40,000 was to construct ocean jetties on the beach and the balance to be spent on the reopening project at the inlet. The bill was to be introduced within a few days by Delegate Horace Davis of Worcester County. No such act appears in the Laws of Maryland for 1929: the printed index to volume 572 lists exactly two Ocean City acts — the improvement bonds and the pier company — and the Worcester County entry carries no inlet, jetty or shore-protection item of any kind.
Fourteen months earlier the State Roads Commission had committed $140,000 to dredging a channel so that the ebb tide would scour the inlet the storm of 1920 cut. By February 1929 the town was asking for money to *reopen* it. Whatever the dredging achieved, the sea was winning — and this time Annapolis gave nothing at all. Four and a half years later the ocean cut its own inlet and ended the argument.
Ocean City Inlet & Jetty Horace Davis
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1933 · 1933-04-21
The 1933 budget carried $30,000 'for the reconstruction and installation of jetties at the beach fronting Ocean City'
Buried in the State Roads Commission schedules of the 1933 budget bill is a single line item: 'For the Reconstruction and installation of Jetties at the Beach Fronting Ocean City — $30,000.00.' It is the continuation of the beach-protection thread this campaign has followed since the timber jetty of 1922 and Governor Ritchie's veto of the jetty appropriation in 1924, and it is money voted before the storm for the beach the storm was about to take.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Source · checked 2026-08-10
1934 · 1934-09-25
The council passed a resolution on the beach road and bought the town a truck for $125
At the meeting of 25 September 1934, with a full board present, 'Resolution on Beach road was offered and adopted' and, immediately after, 'motion was made & Carried to buy truck for town use at $125.00.' The text of the beach-road resolution is not entered in the minute book — only that it passed. In April the town had ordered its sign at Georgetown rebuilt, in May told the McCabe Sign Co. to repaint the signs, and in October paid the Farm Bureau Insurance Co. $16.00 on the truck. A town that had lost its railway the previous autumn was spending 1934 on roads, signs and a lorry. — 1935 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The State Roads Commission has been searched for it and it is not there. A quoted search for 'beach road' across the Commission's 1934-1936 report returns ZERO hits. The volume's only comparable named road in Worcester County is 'the road known as the Sinepuxent Bay road', of which the earlier volume says only that 'The widening of the road known as the Sinepuxent Bay road, re-location of same, and stablizing it with local material has proved quite satisfactory'. The text of the council's resolution of 25 September 1934 remains unrecovered, and the fact's own caution — that 'Beach road' is not defined in the minute — stands. Note for the road thread: the Coastal Highway first appears in the Commission's schedules on 4 and 10 August 1936, after the period in question.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1934 · 1934-11-27
In November the town wrote to the State Roads Commission asking that two more jetties be built 'to complete the system'
The inlet was fifteen months old and the town did not think it was finished. At the meeting of 27 November 1934 the secretary was ordered 'to write State Roads Commission asking that 2 more jetties be built to complete the System.' The phrasing is the interesting part: the council speaks of a system of jetties of which the two built so far are an incomplete part, and it addresses the request not to the War Department or the Corps of Engineers — the bodies that had run the 1933 dredging and jetty contract — but to Maryland's own road agency. The same sentence of the minutes also orders the secretary to write the town's new auditor 'asking if he could recommend an expert on Costs and operation of Electric plants'; the town was pursuing its harbour and its power supply in the same breath. — 1935 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The State Roads Commission's side has now been searched and the answer is a measured negative with one suggestive adjacency. Neither the Commission's 1930-1934 nor its 1934-1936 report reproduces incoming correspondence at all, and the town's letter of 27 November 1934 is not in either. What the 1934-1936 volume does carry, in a schedule headed 'OCEAN CITY BEACH PROTECTION', is authorisation 661-4 of 6 September 1934 for 'Ocean City, two timber jetties', completed 31 January 1936 at $11,020.64 — and authorisation 693-5, granted 9 July 1935, for 'Jetties at Ocean Cty, near 12th and 13th Sts., prel. eng. costs', on which only $16.39 of preliminary engineering was ever spent and no construction was booked. Seven and a half months after the town asked for two more jetties 'to complete the System', the Commission authorised jetties at two named Ocean City streets and then did not build them. NO SOURCE CONNECTS THE TWO; the adjacency is flagged, not asserted. Context from the earlier volume: 'Nine timber jetties have been constructed at Ocean City for beach protection and building purposes.' — 1936 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: No reply from the State Roads Commission appears in 1936. What the Commission was actually doing that year for Ocean City was roads: it advertised in September for bids on resurfacing a mile and a half of the Ocean City Road east of Salisbury, and by June a Worcester delegation was pressing it for a dual highway to the Delaware line and a 3,000-foot connection between Ocean City and the new fishing harbour on Sinepuxent Bay. The 1936 jetty work was federal - 800 tons of stone on the north jetty under S. S. Jones, and a $73,000 War Department allocation on 31 August.
A year after the ocean did the digging, the argument had already moved on from whether there would be an inlet to whether there was enough stone in it — and the town was asking the state, not Washington, to pay for the rest.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Ocean City Inlet & Jetty
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1935 · 1935-07-09
While the Corps built stone jetties at the inlet, the State Roads Commission was building timber ones up the beach
The federal jetties at the inlet are only half of what was being driven into the sand in 1935. The Maryland State Roads Commission's report for 1934-1936 carries a schedule headed “OCEAN CITY BEACH PROTECTION”: authorisation 661-4, granted 6 September 1934, for “Ocean City, two timber jetties”, completed 31 January 1936 at $11,020.64; and authorisation 693-5, granted 9 July 1935, for “Jetties at Ocean Cty, near 12th and 13th Sts., prel. eng. costs”, on which just $16.39 of preliminary engineering was ever booked and no construction. The fund opened the year with $19,534.00 and closed the following September with $30,231.97 unspent. The Commission's earlier volume explains the programme and its cause in one paragraph: “Nine timber jetties have been constructed at Ocean City for beach protection and building purposes. The causeway on the State road leading into Ocean City has been strengthened and protected by a treated timber bulkhead, this being made necessary by the opening of the Sinepuxent Bay inlet opposite the causeway by the terrific storm of August, 1933.” The town had written to the Commission on 27 November 1934 asking for two more jetties “to complete the System”; the Commission's reports do not reproduce incoming correspondence and no reply has been found, but an authorisation for jetties at two named Ocean City streets was granted seven and a half months later. — 1936 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The State Roads Commission's own ledger closes it. Project Wo-157-1-1019, 'Ocean City, two timber jetties', authorised 6 September 1934, was COMPLETED ON 31 JANUARY 1936 at a cost of $11,020.64, charged against the Ocean City Beach Protection Fund; a companion preliminary-engineering item for jetties near 12th and 13th Streets closed on 31 August 1936 at $16.39. The Fund carried $19,534.00 forward from 30 September 1935 and took $30,000.00 in receipts during the year. The successor 1937-38 report records that 'a new jetty is being completed at 12th Street in Ocean City, replacing the old and inadequate jetty which was one of the first built in the system designed to prevent erosion of this ocean beach front.'
Ocean City Inlet & Jetty
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1936 · 1936-01-31
The State Roads Commission's two timber jetties at Ocean City were completed on 31 January 1936 for $11,020.64
Project Wo-157-1-1019, 'Ocean City, two timber jetties', authorised by the Maryland State Roads Commission on 6 September 1934, was completed on 31 January 1936 at a cost of $11,020.64, charged against the Ocean City Beach Protection Fund. A companion item, Wo-166-1019, 'Jetties at Ocean City, near 12th and 13th Sts., preliminary engineering costs', authorised 9 July 1935, closed on 31 August 1936 at $16.39. The Beach Protection Fund carried $19,534.00 forward from 30 September 1935 and received $30,000.00 in the year, of which $11,037.03 went on those two completed projects, leaving $38,496.97. The Commission spent the rest of its Ocean City money on roads: a wall at the Salisbury end of the Sinepuxent Bay bridge ($2,463.25, completed 30 September 1936), electric work on the same bridge ($9,473.16, completed 31 May 1936), 41,000 feet of sand fence on the Coastal Highway between Ocean City and the Delaware line (authorised 10 August 1936), and 'Wharf Rd. at Ocean City, 4,500 ft. of sand asphalt road', authorised 29 September 1936 - the experimental road to the new fishing harbour that the Messenger had been reporting all summer.
The Beach Ocean City Inlet & Jetty
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1936 · 1936-06-01
The West Ocean City fishing harbour opened in June 1936: 3,250 feet long, ten feet deep, and the end of the town's policy of keeping the fleet out
Col. E. J. Dent, District Engineer of the U.S. War Department, said in Ocean City in early May 1936 that the new fishing harbour on the mainland side would be completed by 1 June. The Messenger printed its dimensions on 28 May: 3,250 feet long, ten feet deep at low tide, with a channel 100 feet wide at the bottom and 180 feet wide at the surface, two 200-foot turning basins, and a three-mile channel then being dredged north into Isle of Wight Bay. By 21 May the dredge had finished the west harbour and was starting the East Channel on the Ocean City side, with a large fleet of boats already anchored waiting for the bluefish run. By 11 June a majority of the craft in the new channel harbour were deep-sea fishing boats; by 16 July two $100,000 pleasure yachts lay there and hundreds of visitors came to look at them, and an improved road was being built to connect the harbour to Ocean City proper, with a filling-station base and a Yacht Club headquarters planned for the made island. In June the Worcester delegation was pressing the State Roads Commission for a 3,000-foot stretch of road to finish the connection. In 1934 the town's stated policy had been 'to discourage entrance of the fishing fleet until the channel is completed'. In 1936 the channel was completed, and the fleet came.
The hinge of Ocean City's identity as a sport-fishing port turns here. Two years earlier the town wanted the fleet kept out until the channel was ready. In June 1936 the channel was ready, and the town has been a fishing port ever since.
Ocean City Inlet & Jetty Ocean City Yacht Club
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-07-28
The Secretary of War told Congress the Ocean City bridge bill was unnecessary, and Congress passed it anyway
H.R. 7806 of the 75th Congress authorised the State Roads Commission of Maryland to build 'a free highway bridge across Sinepuxent Bay in Worcester County, Md., at Ocean City, Md., to replace a bridge already in existence.' On 28 July 1937 Mr. Cole of Maryland reported it out of the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce with a recommendation that it pass, and with one amendment: 'Page 1, line 8, and in the title of the bill, change the word "Sinepunxent" to "Sinepuxent".' The Department of Agriculture had written on 23 July that 'Favorable action on the bill is recommended.' The War Department had written on 17 July that it had no objection but that 'The navigable portions of Sinepuxent Bay, however, lie wholly within the limits of the State of Maryland, and the proposed bridge can consequently be authorized by State law and duly constructed provided the plans are submitted to and approved by the Chief of Engineers and by the Secretary of War before construction is commenced, in conformity with the Federal law contained in section 9 of the River and Harbor Act of March 3, 1899. The enactment of this measure therefore appears to be unnecessary.' It is signed Harry H. Woodring, Secretary of War.
Ocean City's bay is too small to be anybody's business but Maryland's - which is the same fact that had kept the inlet unbuilt for sixty years, arriving this time as a shrug from the Secretary of War.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-08-13
Delaware had built its ocean highway to Bethany Beach by 1937 and was waiting on Maryland to finish the road to Ocean City
'Delaware already has built a seashore highway south from Rehoboth Beach as far as Bethany Beach, and expects to extend this four miles to reach the Maryland line,' the Worcester Democrat reported on 13 August 1937. 'Building of the Maryland road then would complete the connection between Rehoboth Beach and Ocean City.' The article notes that the causeway and bridge were the resort's only link to the mainland and that 'Bad storms sometimes have interrupted traffic on this route.' In the same year the town was fighting over where to put a new bridge, the road that would eventually make Ocean City the southern end of a continuous coastal highway was already built as far as the state line from the other direction - and the missing piece was Maryland's.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-09-02
Five hundred and thirty voters, one-third of them living out of town, were entitled to choose where Ocean City's $900,000 bridge would land
The Messenger followed the bridge from soundings to statute. In April the State Roads Commission made borings in Ocean City harbour for a '$760,000' span while a delegation from Ocean City and West Ocean City petitioned with 150 property owners' signatures for a site south of Wicomico Street, preferably South Division Street; in March the Commission voted $1,000 for emergency repairs to the existing bridge. On 26 August the paper reported the 'Sinepuxent Bridge Bill passed by the Senate', 'providing for construction of bridge at either Wicomico, Worcester or South Division Streets, but people of Ocean City' to choose. On 2 September, under 'Ocean City To Hold Bridge Site Election Thursday; 530 Voters', it printed the mechanics: the special election on 9 September, polls at the Municipal Building on Dorchester Street from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., a ballot listing North Division, South Division, Wicomico and Worcester Streets with a blank for a write-in, and a cost now put at $900,000 with approaches. And it printed the franchise, which is the striking part: 'Under the Ocean City Charter, persons who are taxpayers on real or personal property at Ocean City, irrespective of their residence, may vote' — about a third of the 530 lived somewhere else. In December the delay in the plans sent the Chamber of Commerce to Governor Nice, and on 15 December W. Preston Laws and C. W. Purnell 'volunteered to go to Annapolis on Wednesday to tell Gov. Harry Nice where to put the new bridge at Ocean City.'
Ocean City Chamber of Commerce W. Thomas Elliott W. Preston Laws Dr. Charles Washington Purnell
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-09-09
The third county paper printed what the other two did not: Ocean City voted four to one for the old bridge site, and the mayor led one of the factions
'VOTERS OF RESORT PREFER SITE OF PRESENT BRIDGE — Decided By An Election Which Gave A Majority Of Four To One For Old Site,' the Worcester Democrat and the Ledger-Enterprise reported on 10 September 1937. 'Ocean City's long-continued and heated dissension over the location of a new bridge to connect it to the mainland drew to an end Thursday as residents and property owners resorted to the ballot box to fix the location of the bridge. Mayor Thomas W. Elliott called a special election several weeks ago. He heads one faction in the town. The State Roads Commission has the money for the bridge, but will not build it until the town decides where it is to be.' Then the argument itself, which no other source gives: 'One side in the dispute wants the bridge where the present one is located. They claim that Sinepuxent Bay, separating Ocean City from the mainland, is narrowest at this point. By building the span here, they add, some money will be left over for the approaches. The other group wants the second bridge north of the present one. They say that the new location will relieve traffic congestion by discharging its stream of cars into the widest street in the town. Also, they add, the new bridge would be north of the main fishing boat docks, so its draw span would not have to be opened as frequently as if it were built on the other site. All persons who live or own property in the town were permitted to vote. The same voting qualifications were required as in elections for City Councilmen.' The Smyrna Times of Delaware, which had covered the row five weeks earlier, says which faction was which and which one the mayor was in. 'The site of the new bridge has been in dispute for five months ... President Roosevelt approved the measure last week. A group of taxpayers advised Mayor W. Thomas Elliott to let the property owners vote on the question ... Under the Ocean City charter, any person who owns property in the resort town may vote in municipal elections. Among the property holders are persons with permanent residences in Wilmington, Del.; Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington, Salisbury, Md., and Berlin, Md. One group of citizens wants the new bridge built on the site of the present one. They say it will be cheaper because the bay is very narrow at this point. The state has $750,000 available for the construction ... The other main group wants the new bridge five blocks north of the present location. MAYOR ELLIOTT BELONGS TO THIS GROUP. They say that the bridge at this point would lead to North Division Street, which is twice as wide as any other Ocean City street ... there would be less danger to the bridge from tides because it would be farther from the Ocean City inlet to the ocean and that its draw would not have to be opened so much because it would be above most of the fishing docks in the harbor.' So the mayor who called the election, wrote the resolution and signed the notice was on the losing side of it: North Division Street took 83 votes to Worcester Street's 275.
Mayor Elliott called a referendum, put four streets on the ballot, and lost it three to one to the street he had not wanted. Four months later the state told the town the vote did not bind it anyway.
Ocean City Inlet & Jetty W. Thomas Elliott
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-09-09
Ocean City voted 275 to 97 for Worcester Street as the landing of its new highway bridge, and Congress had already written the choice into federal law
By an Act of the first session of the 75th Congress the State Roads Commission of Maryland was authorised 'to construct, maintain and operate a free highway bridge and approaches thereto across Sinepuxent Bay, at Worcester Street, or South Division Street or Wicomico Street, in Worcester County, Maryland, at Ocean City' - and the Act further provided that if the town's voters designated a preference for some other point, 'then such designation shall be the point fixed for the building of said bridge.' The council called a special meeting on 30 August 1937 and, on F. J. Townsend's motion seconded by W. Preston Laws, resolved 3-0 to put the question to the voters on 9 September, polls at the Municipal Building from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., ballot listing Worcester, Wicomico, South Division and North Division Streets with a blank line for a write-in. The judges of election were Wm. G. Rounds, Edwin P. Calhoun and Edward Kurtz, and the result the clerk entered was: Worcester 275, North Division 83, Wicomico 7, South Division 6, North 1st Street 1. Worcester Street is where the bridge was built and where the causeway still lands.
A town of a few hundred voters was handed, by federal statute, the power to overrule Congress on where its own bridge would touch the island - and used it to confirm the obvious.
W. Thomas Elliott Francis J. Townsend W. Preston Laws William H. Scott John M. Mumford William G. Rounds Edwin P. Calhoun Edward Kurtz
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-12-30
Four months after Ocean City voted 275 to 97 for Worcester Street, the state said the vote was not binding and the bridge would go somewhere else
'Ocean City's new bridge over the Sinepuxent Bay ... probably will be built several blocks north of the present span despite a municipal vote for the present location,' the Associated Press reported from Baltimore on 30 December 1937. 'Ocean City residents, in a special election, voted for the present site. The vote is not binding on the state.' That is the whole 1937 bridge story in one sentence. Congress had written into the Act the town's right to designate a point; the town had spent August and September organising a special election in which non-resident taxpayers could vote; 372 ballots were cast and 275 of them said Worcester Street. In December two councilmen 'volunteered to go to Annapolis ... to tell Gov. Harry Nice where to put the new bridge at Ocean City', and by the end of the month the State Roads Commission's engineers had a different answer. The bridge, when it came, landed at Worcester Street after all — but not because of the vote. — 1938 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The consequence is now documented at both ends. On 6 June 1938 Ocean City's own council enacted an ordinance approving the State Roads Commission's plans for a bridge landing in the beds of North Division and Caroline Streets under SRC Contract No. WO-180, and granted the state the public easement in both - which is to say the town legislated the referendum's defeat, seven months after losing the argument. The State Roads Commission accepted the grant on 27 July 1938 and sent a certified copy of its resolution back to the town, and it was copied into the minute book. The fight nonetheless continued through a residents' committee, a War Department permit hearing on 15 August at which twelve speakers opposed the North Division site, and a request in November for another federal hearing.
A federal statute gave a town of 530 taxpayers a veto over its own bridge, and the state took nine words in an AP wire to say the veto did not exist.
W. Preston Laws Dr. Charles Washington Purnell
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1938 · 1938-06-06
Nine months after voting four to one for Worcester Street, Ocean City signed away North Division and Caroline Streets for the new bridge instead
On 9 September 1937 the town voted 275 to 97 for Worcester Street as the landing of its new highway bridge, in a referendum Congress itself had written into the bridge authorisation. On 30 December 1937 the state said the vote was not binding. On the morning of Monday 6 June 1938, at a special meeting called for the purpose, the Mayor and City Council of Ocean City enacted an ordinance approving the State Roads Commission's plans 'for the Construction of a bridge over Sinepuxent Bay from Ocean City to the mainland, and its Approaches in the Beds of North Division Street and Caroline Street', under the Commission's Contract No. WO-180, and granted the State of Maryland the public easement in the beds of both streets from Philadelphia Avenue to Sinepuxent Bay - reserving to itself, in Section 3, 'the full power and right at all times to enact and enforce all such traffic and parking rules and regulations' and all other police powers. The State Roads Commission accepted the grant by resolution at its Baltimore office on 27 July 1938, on the motion of Mr. Jarboe seconded by Mr. Luthardt, and sent a certified copy back to the town over the signature of its secretary L. H. Steuart, which was copied into the minute book. Ocean City's own council thus enacted the defeat of Ocean City's own referendum, and did it unanimously in a nine-thirty morning session. — 1940 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The 1938 fact records Ocean City signing away North Division and Caroline Streets. Two things are now added, neither of which changes it. First, the State Roads Commission formally ACCEPTED the grant by resolution at its Baltimore office on 27 July 1938, moved by Mr. Barboe and seconded by Mr. Luthardt, and a certified copy signed by L. H. Stewart, Secretary, is filed in the Ocean City minute book. Second, the town REPEALED the grant by ordinance on 15 January 1940 at a special meeting called by the new mayor - and then, on 12 March 1940, had to ask its own attorney whether the repeal was valid or whether the previous council's grant still held. The 1938 transaction was therefore not final, and the campaign should stop treating it as the end of the bridge fight.
The only time Congress ever gave a Maryland resort town a veto over a federal bridge, the town used it, won it four to one, and then thirteen weeks after the state overruled the result passed an ordinance handing over the streets the losing side had wanted. The referendum is in the record and so is the ordinance, and the ordinance is the one that built the bridge.
W. Thomas Elliott W. Preston Laws J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1938 · 1938-07-27
On 27 July 1938 Ocean City handed Philadelphia Avenue north of Ninth Street to the State of Maryland, and the Coastal Highway was born out of a town street
At a special meeting on the evening of Wednesday 27 July 1938 - the mayor and two councilmen present, moved by Dr. Townsend and seconded by Preston Laws - Ocean City passed an ordinance granting the State Roads Commission 'the title in and to the bed of Phila. Ave and the intersecting streets from south Side of Ninth Street to the northerly Corporate limits of Ocean City, and the title to a portion of Lots # 7, 8, 9, 10 & 11 in Block 53 of a plat of Ocean City', for the purpose of 'Constructing a Costal highway leading from Ocean City to the Delaware line', under the Commission's Contract No. WO-171-1-1019 and its plats Nos. 3250 and 3251. The recital is explicit that the lots the state wanted were the town's own and were 'used in Connection with their Water System'. A week earlier, on 20 July, the council had already voted to deed the state eighteen to twenty feet off Baltimore Avenue frontage of the same lots 'for the widening of Phila. Ave. from 9th to 15th St.' and to grant the easement in the street bed from 9th to 15th. The State Roads Commission accepted the whole grant at its Baltimore meeting on 28 July 1938, again on Jarboe's motion seconded by Luthardt, and the resolution was copied into the town's minute book. Section 3 kept the town's police power, its traffic rules and its parking rules over the road - which is why parking on Coastal Highway has been an Ocean City question ever since. — 1938 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The purpose and price of the road the town gave Philadelphia Avenue for are now attested from outside the minute book. The Worcester Democrat and the Ledger-Enterprise of 8 July 1938, page 2, file 0391, gives it as a $200,000 coastal highway to meet the Delaware seacoast road at the state line, one lane to be built that summer, a dual highway only hoped for. The State Roads Commission's own operating report for fiscal 1939-1940 subsequently records the highway as COMPLETED and Rehoboth as thirty miles from Ocean City by road.
Everything north of Ninth Street in Ocean City is built along a road the town gave away in a single evening in July 1938 to get a concrete highway to Delaware. It cost the town its own street, part of its waterworks lot, and nothing else - and it is the single decision that made the modern island possible.
W. Thomas Elliott Francis J. Townsend W. Preston Laws J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1938 · 1938-07-28
Ocean City residents formed a Bridge Committee in the summer of 1938 to keep Worcester Street, and asked the state to survey North Fifteenth Street instead
'The Ocean City Bridge Committee, recently chosen at a meeting of residents favoring Worcester street for a new bridge and whose membership includes L. Franklin Purnell, Dr. Charles W. Purnell, Clarence Carey, Edward Gray and William H. Purnell, secretary, said today that a written official request for a new bridge survey for North 15th street would be sent immediately to the State Roads Commission in Baltimore.' Their case was that approval for a bridge at North Fifteenth Street, together with the improvement and maintenance of the present Worcester Street span, 'would not only build an economical bridge at North 15th street, where rights of way can be secured at low cost, but also re-build the present Worcester street bridge.' It was a committee formed after the town council had already given the state North Division and Caroline Streets, and its members are the same men who turn up three weeks later at the War Department hearing.
Ocean City Bridge Committee L. Franklin Purnell Dr. Charles Washington Purnell Clarence Carey Edward Gray William H. Purnell
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1938 · 1938-08-15
Three hundred people packed the Ocean City Pier convention hall in August 1938 for a War Department hearing on the bridge, and twelve of them spoke against it
Capt. H. T. Miller, District War Department engineer, and Col. John S. Doyle, Senior District Engineer, presided over a public hearing in the Ocean City Pier convention hall on Monday 15 August 1938, 'held to ascertain opinion on the application of the State Roads Commission for a War Department permit to construct a new $450,000 bay bridge at North Division street in Ocean City'. Around three hundred people came, mostly from Ocean City and its neighbourhood. The count was lopsided: 'Two speakers and four documents in favor of granting the State a permit for a North Division street bridge were offset by opposition expressed in ten documents together with verbal statements made by twelve speakers.' Navigation was the only argument that counted. Letters and petitions came from boat captains of St. Martin's River and Isle of Wight Bay, from Ocean City boat captains who offered a petition, and from Trimper's Marine Railway, The Farms Company, Glen Riddle Farms, Peninsula Packing Company, the Beach Gunning Club, the Nordica Hotel, W. Preston Laws and Capt. Thomas T. Moore. Don Harmon, an Ocean City seafood dealer, and Capt. Gilbert of Florida, a party-boat captain, spoke against; so did Capt. Granville Taylor of Crisfield and State Senator Milton L. Veasey. Clarence Carey argued that a North Division Street span 'would be too close to the present Worcester street bridge a few blocks south and would be a menace to navigation'. On the other side, Grice Long, a boat owner and Ocean City summer resident of five years, said 'a bridge at North Division street would be a boon not only to navigation but to traffic'. And Capt. Miller made the ruling that mattered: the State Roads Commission 'must definitely decide whether or not it intends to maintain the present Worcester street bridge at Ocean City, before any permit will be issued by the War Department for a new $450,000 bay bridge at North Division street or any other location.'
The referendum had been overruled and the town's own council had signed the streets away in June. So the fight moved to the only forum left that had not yet ruled - the federal permit - and the argument stopped being about where Ocean City wanted its bridge and became about what would happen to the bridge it already had.
Clarence Carey W. Preston Laws Thomas T. Moore Capt. H. T. Miller Col. John S. Doyle Milton L. Veasey
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1938 · 1938-12-06
West Ocean City came to look at the bridge plans in December 1938, and Ocean City's new council took no action and sent the plans back
Five months after the town's own ordinance gave the state North Division and Caroline Streets, the bridge was still being fought. On 22 November 1938 L. Franklin Purnell came before the council 'asking that City take immediate action asking for Another hearing on Bridge location by War Department', and the mayor and the city attorney were appointed to write the authorities 'to ascertain if any thing could be done'. On 6 December the plans themselves were on the table: 'Bridge plans were examined by many people and many were present from West Ocean City. Council took no action on the Bridge plans and secretary instructed to return plans to Engineers office as requested by them.' A room full of mainlanders, a set of federal plans, and a council that looked and did nothing.
L. Franklin Purnell Edmond H. Johnson William H. Scott
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1938 · 1938-12-31
The State Roads Commission's own report has the Sinepuxent Bay bridge under construction, replacing the span of 1918
Maryland's State Roads Commission published no volume for 1938 alone - the HathiTrust series jumps from 1930-34 straight to a combined 1938-40 report - but that volume records the Sinepuxent Bay bridge at Ocean City under construction and states that it replaces the 1918 structure. The same volume records that the Right of Way Division secured, during fiscal 1939 and 1940, the rights of way for about fifteen million dollars of construction 'among which were the Potomac River and Ocean City Bridge projects'. So the sequence the town's minute book begins in June 1938 - the ordinance, the state's acceptance, the federal hearing in August - ends in a bridge the state built.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1940 · 1940-01-15
Thirteen days into the new mayor's term Ocean City repealed the ordinance that had handed the State the beds of North Division and Caroline Streets for its new bridge
At a special meeting called by Mayor Cropper for 8:30 P.M. on 15 January 1940, with only two councilmen present and the reading of the previous minutes dispensed with, the council unanimously passed an ordinance repealing the ordinance of 6 June 1938. The engrossed copy filed with the minute recites the whole of what it undoes: an ordinance 'approving the construction of certain street improvements by the State Roads Commission of Maryland, in Ocean City, Maryland, and granting unto the State Roads Commission, or any successor agency of the State the title in and to the beds of North Division Street from Philadelphia Avenue to Synepuxent Bay and Caroline Street from Philadelphia Avenue to Synepuxent Bay, and relinquishing to the State of Maryland jurisdiction and control over the said streets in Ocean City to the extent necessary for the purpose of construction of a new bridge over the Synepuxent Bay into North Division Street and Caroline Street.' Section 1 repeals it and 'each section thereof'; section 2 makes the repeal effective on passage. It was signed by E. R. Bounds as President of the City Council, attested by J. M. Mumford as Secretary, and approved over the signature 'CLIFFORD P. CROPPER, Mayor'. Filed with it in the same document set is the State Roads Commission's own certified resolution of 27 July 1938 formally accepting the grant now repealed. On 12 March the council asked its attorney, Wm. H. Scott, 'to learn whether the cancelling ordinance to State Roads Commission to rights of street beds of North Div. street was valid or if the granting by previous council still held, and what rights the State Roads had in closing St. Louis Ave., if any.' — 1941 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The stakes of that 15 January 1940 repeal are now visible. On 9 December 1941 the Salisbury Times reported that 'Ocean City's new highway bridge today enters this Maryland resort at North Division Street, six city blocks north of the present highway bridge at Worcester Street.' North Division Street was one of the two streets — with Caroline Street — that the town had granted to the State Roads Commission and then repealed the grant of, and whose status it was still asking questions about in March 1940. The street the town took back from the State was the street the State's new bridge landed in.
Ocean City voted four to one for Worcester Street in 1937, was overruled, signed away North Division and Caroline Streets in 1938, and in January 1940 took them back - and then, eight weeks later, had to ask its own lawyer whether it was allowed to. The bridge fight the campaign has been following since 1937 is not over in 1940; it has simply moved from the ballot to the ordinance book, and the town is no longer sure of its own ground.
Clifford P. Cropper J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1940 · 1940-02-20
The Coastal Highway opened in the fiscal year ending June 1940 and the State was already maintaining it by February; no dedication ceremony appears anywhere in the State Roads Commission's record
Two governors had been booked to dedicate the Ocean City-to-Rehoboth beach road on Friday 1 September 1939, and the whole programme was cancelled because eight miles of Maryland were unfinished. The State Roads Commission's operating report for the fiscal years 1939-1940 records the road as done: 'The completion of a highway from Ocean City to the Delaware Line, commonly known as the Coastal highway, which connects with an improved road in Delaware. This now makes it possible for traffic to go from Ocean City to Rehobeth, Delaware, a distance of approximately thirty miles, over a road paralleling the coast.' The next printed page carries a photograph captioned 'SAND ASPHALT CONSTRUCTION ALONG COASTAL HIGHWAY FROM OCEAN CITY, NORTH'. And the Commission's following report shows the road in service and being looked after: sand-fence and gravel and top-soil maintenance contracts on the Coastal Highway dated 20 February 1940 and 9 July 1940, running on to September 1942. So the road was open to traffic no later than February 1940 - between the cancelled ceremony of 1 September 1939 and the first maintenance contract. A full-text search of the volume that announces its completion returns zero occurrences of any word beginning 'dedicat'.
The most consequential road ever built to Ocean City opened without a ribbon, without a governor and without a date anybody wrote down. The State Roads Commission's own report describes it in a sentence of the passive voice, prints a photograph of sand asphalt, and moves on to sand fences. Everything the resort became after the war came up that road - and the only ceremony it was ever offered was cancelled on the day Germany invaded Poland, and never rescheduled.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1940 · 1940-09-10
The new council's first act was to cancel eight thousand dollars of bonds left over from building the sewer
At its organising meeting on the evening of 10 September 1940, the council 'motion was made and carried that the $8,000 Treasury Bonds left over from the building of the Sanitary Sewer be cancelled.' The same meeting reviewed the financial report and asked the auditors to begin the audit on 16 September; ordered the storm sewer on North First Street relaid; asked for prices on an eight-inch water main to cross a street; and instructed the secretary to get an estimate from the State Roads Commission of the cost of surfacing four streets 'which are unimproved from Balt. Ave. to Board walk.' Six weeks earlier, on 6 August, the outgoing council had charged off five small debts - $8.00 owed by Edward Purnell on a note, $3.25 by the L. D. Walker estate, $14.89 by L. Franklin Purnell, $26.14 by Frank Phillips and Laurens Kitchen - and instructed the secretary 'to pay off all notes if possible before close of fiscal year.'
Ocean City sewered itself between 1935 and 1937 on borrowed money, spent 1938 being told by Washington that there was no more, sold ten thousand more of bonds in 1939 for the laterals - and in September 1940 quietly cancelled eight thousand it had never needed to issue. The clearest single sign that the Depression municipality was solvent again is a council retiring its own unused debt in the same month Britain was being bombed.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1943 · 1943-03-17
A special full-board meeting on 17 March 1943 passed an ordinance handing Caroline Street and North Division Street to the State Roads Commission — the two blocks that carry the bridge traffic onto Baltimore Avenue.
Clifford P. Cropper Harold J. Rayne Herman D. Parsons E. Raymond Bounds J. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-12
1960 · 1960-11-17
The County Commissioners spent over $40,000 to boost the Snow Hill health service, and approved a park project in September
A Shore canal survey followed in July on the waterway the paper had campaigned for in 1959; Thomas N. Kay of the Maryland State Roads Commission confirmed by letter which Worcester roads would receive immediate attention; State Police demonstrated a new sobriety tester in June; a shutdown left workers unemployed in November; and on 1 December resort robberies were attributed to Delaware youths, with Worcester merchants nonetheless optimistic.
E. J. Thomas
Source · checked 2026-09-02

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Maryland State Roads Commission

In the record (57)

Senator Orlando Harrison secures a $200,000 appropriation for a concrete bridge at Ocean City — arguing that seven or eight hundred automobiles a day already reach the town in summer.

The State Roads Commission picks the bridge site at the end of May 1916: about three hundred yards north of the railroad bridge, landing at the foot of Worcester Street.

The whole Worcester County board of commissioners goes to Annapolis in February 1916 to plead the Ocean City bridge before the Senate Finance Committee.

Chapter 665 of 1916 authorizes and requests the State Roads Commission to build an iron, steel or concrete bridge across Sinepuxent Bay at Ocean City.

About a hundred people crowd the Atlantic Hotel on 16 August 1916 for the federal hearing on where to put the bay bridge; Major Oaks approves the state's line and orders a 100-foot channel.

The bridge is bid, re-awarded and still unbuilt when 1916 ends: on 30 December the chairman of the State Roads Commission writes Harrison that work will start "next week."

The bay bridge does not open in 1918: the county levy still pays the Ocean City Bridge Company, and the State legislature refunds it money.

A trustee's sale reveals the State took 6.2 of the 9.9 acres of the Taber "Hommock" opposite Ocean City for the bridge.

The State Roads Commission's plan for carrying the state highways through Maryland's incorporated towns allots Ocean City $6,000.

Maryland's road lobby argues for the state highway budget on the ground that Germans might land an army on the Eastern Shore.

With the Annapolis–Claiborne ferry and the new bridge, Governor Harrington promises Washington a weekend at Ocean City.

Senator Orlando Harrison drives the first automobile over the new bay bridge, with the mayor of Ocean City aboard.

1,800 feet, a 40-foot electric double-leaf draw, a pagoda-roofed operation house and $125,000.

The Sinepuxent Bay highway bridge opens to the public on 5 May 1919 — Ocean City's first automobile crossing.

On 15 June 1919 Worcester County ends its contract with the Ocean City Bridge Company — and stops paying $100 a month to use the railroad bridge.

Ten thousand people and 1,185 automobiles come to Ocean City for the formal opening of the bay bridge on the Fourth of July.

Both 1920 acts that would have built new roads toward Ocean City — the Showell link and the Sinepuxent Neck shell road — were vetoed.

The February storm submerged the railroad's Sinepuxent bridge and stopped B.C.&A. trains at Berlin — while the year-old State Roads highway bridge stood undamaged.

Chapter 382 of 1920 folded Ocean City's beach into the state's Bridge Loan — $250,000 of certificates, with whatever was left after the bridges to "protect Ocean City from the tides."

Senator Orlando Harrison tells the county paper what the 1920 storm did: the front board walk swept away in sections, cottages demolished, and high tides now reaching two hundred feet nearer the ocean-front property than in years past.

In March 1922 the State Roads Commission drives the first experimental jetty into the surf at Ocean City — four hundred feet of double piling opposite Somerset Avenue, sixteen men, three weeks.

The temporary fishing piers that had grown up against the new highway bridge are ordered out of Sinepuxent Bay by 15 April 1922, and a public wharf is promised in their place — on the railroad's land.

Joint Resolution No. 22 of 1922 asks the State Roads Commission to make good on the 1920 promise of a mile of state road inside the limits of Ocean City.

Joint Resolution No. 18 of 1922 orders the State Roads Commission to spend $2,000 of Worcester County road money on dynamite to keep the inlet two miles south of Ocean City from closing.

The 1922 experimental jetty is judged a success and an appropriation is passed to build more.

The State Roads Commission advertises for 'a timber jetty at the entrance of the Sinepuxent Bay two miles south of Ocean City.'

Maryland votes $50,000 for jetties at Ocean City and to keep the 1920 inlet open — and the Governor vetoes it.

Turlington Bros. of Chincoteague win the inlet jetty contract for $1,300 — and the inlet has narrowed from 100 feet to about 20.

"The concrete bridge at Ocean City built by the State is a beautiful structure, free to all. The bridge cost about $130,000."

The State Roads Commission put the Ocean City highway out to bid for widening — it could not safely carry the Sunday crowds.

Ocean City lobbied hard for the Maryland National Guard's state encampment, offering a farm at $50 an acre six miles from the beach.

In the first days of December the surf broke clean across the island into Sinepuxent Bay — "but, protected by the jetties no damage was done and the resort is intact."

Maryland commits $140,000 to dredge and scour the storm inlet south of Ocean City — five years before the storm that made the real one.

Ocean City asks the General Assembly for $100,000 — $40,000 of jetties and $60,000 to reopen the inlet three miles below the town — and gets neither.

The 1933 budget carried $30,000 'for the reconstruction and installation of jetties at the beach fronting Ocean City'

The council passed a resolution on the beach road and bought the town a truck for $125

In November the town wrote to the State Roads Commission asking that two more jetties be built 'to complete the system'

While the Corps built stone jetties at the inlet, the State Roads Commission was building timber ones up the beach

The State Roads Commission's two timber jetties at Ocean City were completed on 31 January 1936 for $11,020.64

The West Ocean City fishing harbour opened in June 1936: 3,250 feet long, ten feet deep, and the end of the town's policy of keeping the fleet out

The Secretary of War told Congress the Ocean City bridge bill was unnecessary, and Congress passed it anyway

Delaware had built its ocean highway to Bethany Beach by 1937 and was waiting on Maryland to finish the road to Ocean City

Five hundred and thirty voters, one-third of them living out of town, were entitled to choose where Ocean City's $900,000 bridge would land

The third county paper printed what the other two did not: Ocean City voted four to one for the old bridge site, and the mayor led one of the factions

Ocean City voted 275 to 97 for Worcester Street as the landing of its new highway bridge, and Congress had already written the choice into federal law

Four months after Ocean City voted 275 to 97 for Worcester Street, the state said the vote was not binding and the bridge would go somewhere else

Nine months after voting four to one for Worcester Street, Ocean City signed away North Division and Caroline Streets for the new bridge instead

On 27 July 1938 Ocean City handed Philadelphia Avenue north of Ninth Street to the State of Maryland, and the Coastal Highway was born out of a town street

Ocean City residents formed a Bridge Committee in the summer of 1938 to keep Worcester Street, and asked the state to survey North Fifteenth Street instead

Three hundred people packed the Ocean City Pier convention hall in August 1938 for a War Department hearing on the bridge, and twelve of them spoke against it

West Ocean City came to look at the bridge plans in December 1938, and Ocean City's new council took no action and sent the plans back

The State Roads Commission's own report has the Sinepuxent Bay bridge under construction, replacing the span of 1918

Thirteen days into the new mayor's term Ocean City repealed the ordinance that had handed the State the beds of North Division and Caroline Streets for its new bridge

The Coastal Highway opened in the fiscal year ending June 1940 and the State was already maintaining it by February; no dedication ceremony appears anywhere in the State Roads Commission's record

The new council's first act was to cancel eight thousand dollars of bonds left over from building the sewer

A special full-board meeting on 17 March 1943 passed an ordinance handing Caroline Street and North Division Street to the State Roads Commission — the two blocks that carry the bridge traffic onto Baltimore Avenue.

The County Commissioners spent over $40,000 to boost the Snow Hill health service, and approved a park project in September