The Ocean City and Fenwick Island Railway Company, Inc.
railroad · founded 1917
Railway company incorporated in Worcester County in 1917 to run north from Ocean City along the beach toward Fenwick Island. Its incorporators — C. Edward Shute, B. Frank Wagamon, William B. S. Powell (the sitting mayor and proprietor of the Atlantic Hotel), Henry T. Moore and Sherman E. Ayars — gave notice in the Democratic Messenger of March 1917 that subscription books for the capital stock would open at Shute and Wagamon's office in Ocean City on Monday 26 March. The scheme belongs to a line of proposals for a beach railroad up the Delaware–Maryland ocean front that Rev. W. C. Poole was still urging in December of the same year. No evidence has been found in the 1917 papers that the company raised money, obtained a right-of-way or laid any track.
In the record (1)
1917 · 1917-03-26
The Ocean City and Fenwick Island Railway Company opens subscription books — the mayor among its five incorporators.
A legal notice in the Democratic Messenger of 17 and 24 March 1917: "The Ocean City and Fenwick Island Railway Company, Inc. Notice is hereby given that the undersigned incorporators of the above mentioned Railway Company will open books of subscription to the capital stock of said Company at the office of Edward Shute and B. Frank Wagamon in Ocean City, Worcester County, Maryland, Monday, March 26th, 1917. C. EDWARD SHUTE. B. FRANK WAGAMON. WILLIAM B. S. POWELL. HENRY T. MOORE. SHERMAN E. AYARS." The proposal is a beach railway running north from Ocean City to Fenwick Island — the line Rev. W. C. Poole would still be arguing for in December, and the same corridor the county had been talking about since the 1890s. Two of the five incorporators, Shute and Wagamon, are the men who found the German bottle on the beach seven weeks later; the third is the sitting mayor and proprietor of the Atlantic Hotel. No evidence has been found that the line was ever built.
William B. S. PowellC. Edward ShuteB. Frank Wagamon
Source · checked 2026-08-06