Ocean City Bridge Company

In the record (21)

1. 1876 · 1876-02-24

   Crossing to Ocean City by the new bay drawbridge: five cents a person, three cents a wheel, two cents a hog.

   Section 7 of Chapter 24, Acts of 1876 set the Ocean City Bridge Company's maximum tolls: "five cents for every person, horse, mule, ox or other cattle; two cents for every sheep or hog; and three cents for every wheel of every cart, wagon or carriage that may pass over said bridge." A four-wheeled carriage with a driver and a horse therefore cost 22 cents to cross. The same section made the resort possible: it declared it "lawful for said corporation to allow the Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad Company to extend the track of their road across said bridge and its approaches, and to run their trains over the same upon such terms and conditions as the respective corporations may agree."

   Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

2. 1876 · 1876-02-24

   Maryland charters the Ocean City Bridge Company — and the act reveals the bay bridge was already built, privately, without permission.

   Chapter 24 of the Acts of 1876, approved February 24, 1876, incorporated the Ocean City Bridge Company. Its preamble is the year's most useful sentence: "during the interval since the last session of the Legislature, public necessity urgently demanded a bridge across Synepuxent Bay, from Hommock Point to Ocean city, in Worcester county, and WHEREAS, to meet this necessity and relying upon future legislation to authorize and confirm their act, Hillary P. Pitts, William Showell, Cyrus L. Williams, John M. Taylor, John R. Purnell, and others, associated together and at their own expense, constructed a secure and substantial bridge at the above named point, with a draw in the same twenty-five feet wide, which will admit the convenient passage of all boats and vessels capable of navigating this portion of said bay." Section 1 retroactively authorized the structure; capital stock was capped at $10,000 in 400 shares of $25; the stockholders were to meet at Berlin on the first Monday of March (March 6, 1876) to elect five directors; Section 6 required a keeper "always in readiness to open" the draw free of charge; Section 9 denied banking privileges; Section 10 reserved the General Assembly's right to amend at pleasure. The bill was reported favorably in the House by Mr. Purnell on January 20, 1876 and passed the Senate 15–0 on February 14, 1876.

   The bridge that made Ocean City a resort was built first and legalized afterwards. Five men put up their own money, threw a drawbridge across the bay, and then asked Annapolis to make it legal — which Annapolis did, in one page, with no fine imposed.

   Wicomico and Pocomoke RailroadDr. Hilary R. PittsWilliam ShowellCyrus L. WilliamsJohn M. TaylorJohn R. Purnell

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

3. 1876 · 1876-07-22

   "The completion of the pier across the bay, over which the cars bring visitors now to the door of the hotel" — the railroad reaches Ocean City itself.

   A correspondent writing from "Ocean City, Md., July 22, '76" for the Wilmington Morning Herald gave the dated, contemporary confirmation that the rail crossing was finished for the resort's second season: "The improvements, however, this year over last are marked; one of the most important being the completion of the pier across the bay, over which the cars bring visitors now to the door of the hotel." He added that "The Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad, connecting with the Eastern Shore Railroad at Salisbury, runs directly to the hotel, and by means of the P. W. & B. and the Delaware Railroads affords easy access [from] all parts of this Peninsula." Before 1876, guests left the cars on the mainland and finished the trip by boat.

   One sentence in a Wilmington newspaper is the whole hinge of Ocean City's history: the year the train stopped at the bay and the year it stopped at the hotel steps are not the same year, and 1876 is the second one.

   Wicomico and Pocomoke RailroadAtlantic Hotel Company

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

4. 1880 · 1880-04-10

   The 1880 charter draws the town as a strip between two Stephen Taber deeds, anchored on the Ocean City Bridge Company's bridge.

   Section 2 of Chapter 209 fixes the corporate limits: "Beginning at a point in Synepuxent Bay at or near the easternmost end of the Ocean City Bridge Company's bridge," south along the bay to the south line of the land Stephen Taber conveyed to Granville Stokes by deed of August 28, 1879, east across Atlantic Avenue to the ocean, north along the surf to the north line of the land Taber conveyed to Hillary E. Pitts, Benjamin Jones Taylor and George W. Purnell, trustees, by deed of July 28, 1876, then north 76 1/8 degrees west across the beach to the bay and back down to the bridge. The commissioners were ordered to have "a survey made by a competent surveyor of all the streets and avenues of said town" and to set a stone at the north and south sides of every east-west street at its intersection with Atlantic Avenue. The original town of Ocean City is, legally, the ground between two parcels Stephen Taber sold — the same New York congressman who patented the 280-acre beach tract in 1869.

   The Commissioners of Ocean CityStephen TaberDr. Hilary R. PittsB. Jones TaylorGranville StokesGeorge W. Purnell

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

5. 1888 · 1888-08-16

   Dr. Hilary R. Pitts's estate is auctioned in front of his own Ocean City drug store — three town lots, a shuttered signal-service office, and stock in the bridge, the hotel and the railroad.

   By the will of Dr. Hilary R. Pitts, late of Worcester County, deceased, his executor John W. Pitts offered the estate at public auction at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, August 16, 1888, "in front of the Drug Store formerly owned by Dr. Pitts, at Ocean City." The advertisement is the closest thing to a property inventory of 1880s Ocean City in this campaign's record: (1) a lot with a two-storied house formerly used as a drug store; (2) an adjoining lot with a two-storied house "formerly occupied as a signal service office"; (3) the lot immediately south, carrying a house recently owned by Stephen T. Aydelotte, sold subject to Aydelotte's twenty-year lease from May 14 at an annual rental of thirteen dollars; and (4) personal estate — shares of the capital stock of the Ocean City Bridge Company, nineteen shares of the capital stock of the Atlantic Hotel Company, Ocean City, and two and a half shares of Delaware, Maryland & Virginia Railroad stock. Terms: ten per cent cash, the balance in two equal annual instalments on the purchasers' interest-bearing bonds.

   Hilary Pitts was on the beach at the 1873 committee meeting that resolved to build a hotel here. Fifteen years later the town he helped invent is a numbered list in a legal advertisement — bridge stock, hotel stock, railroad stock, and a drug store with the signal office next door.

   Atlantic Hotel CompanyDr. Hilary R. Pitts

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

6. 1894 · 1894-07-08

   Two boys rob the Ocean City bridge keeper's till while he opens the draw — and Ocean City's policeman catches them.

   Democratic Messenger, July 14, 1894, under "They Stole Keeper Richardson's Money": "On Sunday the keeper of Ocean City Bridge, Mr. Richardson, who also keeps a small store at the foot of the bridge, was robbed of quite a neat little sum of money for a poor man these troublesome times. It happened this way: He was called to open the bridge draw and left William Jarvis and Richard Smith in his store; when he returned the boys had skipped and the contents of the money drawer was missing. He reported his loss to Mayor Wilson, who instructed Policeman Carey to look out for the boys to return to Ocean City; sure enough they went back and were nabbed by the policeman, who brought them to Snow Hill Jail on Tuesday." It is the first Ocean City police officer named in the record, working under the appointment power the charter had granted the mayor fourteen weeks earlier.

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

7. 1895

   The Baltimore Sun compares Ocean City's toll bridge to a French octroi: every quart of milk and pound of meat entering the town pays a tax at the drawbridge.

   The Democratic Messenger of June 29, 1895 quoted a Baltimore Sun editorial of the preceding Tuesday, in a campaign for "making the bridge at Ocean City a free one": "For years a curious state of affairs appears to have existed at Ocean City. The only approach by which a person can walk or drive into the town is over a bridge. All marketing, such as milk, vegetables and fresh meat, has to pay toll, and the charges added to the price paid by the consumer. This is nearly equivalent to the octroi charged the market gardeners for the entrance of their produce into the French cities, the difference being that in the latter case the charges are probably larger and…" The Ocean City Bridge Company had been chartered in 1876 [fact:1876-ocean-city-bridge-company-chartered] and its tolls were an irritation as early as that first decade [fact:1876-bridge-tolls]. In 1895 the argument had escaped Worcester County and become a Baltimore newspaper's cause — a metropolitan daily arguing that a private toll on the only road onto the island was raising the cost of living in a Maryland town.

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

8. 1895 · 1895-06-28

   The Worcester County commissioners take steps to free the Ocean City bridge of toll — twenty years before the campaign's next record of the same fight.

   One line in the Prince George's Enquirer's Maryland news column of 28 June 1895: 'The county commissioners of Worcester have taken steps to have the bridge leading from the mainland to Ocean City free of toll.' The campaign has held the bridge-toll question from 1915, when the Messenger ran 'NO TOLLS ON O. C. BRIDGE' and the figures were lost to a faded microfilm frame. This puts the county's first move twenty years earlier, in the same season the beach company was doubling its stock and the railway was buying the beach.

   Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.

   Source · checked 2026-08-11

9. 1896 · 1896-04-04

   Maryland empowers Worcester County to lease or buy the Ocean City toll bridge — the first step toward a free crossing.

   Chapter 432 of the Acts of 1896, approved April 4, authorized and empowered "the County Commissioners of Worcester county... to contract with the Ocean City Bridge Company, or with any lessee thereof, to lease or purchase, as the case may be, the bridge across Synepuxent bay from Handcock Point to Ocean city in Worcester county, or to lease or purchase any other bridge that may be built, in the future, at or near Ocean city... by any other company, individual or corporation, upon such terms as may be agreed upon," and gave the bridge company reciprocal power to contract with the commissioners. Twenty years after the Ocean City Bridge Company was chartered, the state opened the door to putting the only land approach to the island into public hands. The act is permissive, not mandatory: it does not record that any purchase was made.

   Chapter 432 of 1896 (indexed in the volume as 482)

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

10. 1902 · 1902-11-08

    The only road onto the beach was a toll bridge run by the railroad's own president — and the county paid it five times what it paid the town.

    At the annual meeting of the Ocean City Bridge Company, held at Salisbury on the same day as the Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic's own election of officers, President Willard Thomson was re-elected, with directors Robert P. Graham, Willard Thomson, A. J. Benjamin and W. L. Rothstein. Thomson was president of the B.C.&A.; Benjamin was its superintendent. The 1902 Worcester County levy, printed in full in July, lists "Ocean City Bridge Co. $500.00" against "Mayor & city council Ocean City $100.00" (the same $100 the county paid Snow Hill). In August citizens were petitioning the County Commissioners to widen the road leading from Berlin to Ocean City.

    By 1902 the Pennsylvania Railroad's Eastern Shore subsidiary owned the rails into Ocean City and its president chaired the company that owned the bridge. Getting to the beach at all meant paying the same men twice.

    Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic RailwayWillard Thomson

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

11. 1903 · 1903-02-14

    The B.C.&A. and the Ocean City council settle a long dispute: $15,000 of railway money in one spring, a $3,000 station, the tracks off Baltimore Avenue, and both ends of the bridge extended.

    Democratic Messenger, 14 February 1903: "The Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway Co., and Ocean City Council have at last reached an agreement by which the Railroad Company will expend $15,000.00 in improvements this spring. A new $3,000 station will be built near the bridge and one farther up the beach. The railroad tracks [will be] removed from Baltimore to Philadelphia avenue, and additions made to each end of the bridge. Rapid growth and expansion may now be expected of Maryland's seaside resort." This is the delivery on the promise the town extracted in 1899 [fact:1899-a-school-two-hotels-and-a-new-terminus-promised], four years late, and it comes the year after the Ocean City Bridge Company passed under railroad control [fact:1902-ocean-city-bridge-company-under-the-railroad]. Worcester County's own 1903 levy carries a separate line, "Ocean City bridge fund $500.00."

    Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic RailwayPennsylvania Railroad Company

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

12. 1913

    The town's legally required August accounts, printed in 1912, are not printed in 1913.

    Chapters 561 and 658 of 1904 require the Mayor and City Council of Ocean City to publish an itemised statement of receipts and disbursements each August, and the 1912 pass found one — "FINANCIAL REPORT OF OCEAN CITY, MD., From August 1st, 1911, to August 1st, 1912," signed by treasurer J. W. Quillen, in the Messenger of 10 August 1912. No such statement appears anywhere in the 1913 file. All 147 pages of the Snow Hill Democratic Messenger that mention Ocean City in 1913 were read in full, including every August issue, and none carries a financial report, a levy, or a rate. What the year does yield of municipal money is indirect: the county levy pays the Ocean City Bridge Company its $500 appropriation, and pays W. B. S. Powell $70.00 and John Hagan $54.70 as registration officers and judges of Ocean City's own election precinct, with Daniel Trimper, Jr., $18.20 as judge and Edwin P. Calhoun $17.60 as clerk.

    William B. S. PowellDaniel W. Trimper, Jr.

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

13. 1915

    The Ocean City Bridge Company threatened in June 1915 to put tolls on the bay bridge unless the county paid it more; the County Commissioners paid up rather than let a toll gate stand between the mainland and the beach.

    The Democratic Messenger of 12 June 1915 led its front page "NO TOLLS ON O. C. BRIDGE — County Commissioners Pay More Rather Than Have a Toll Bridge at Ocean City." The story: some weeks earlier the Commissioners had word from the Ocean City Bridge Company that what the county paid for the public use of the bridge was insufficient; traffic had grown so heavy that the company would have to keep a watchman at each end and otherwise improve the service to make it safer for automobiles and others. If the county would not pay more, the company proposed to make it a toll bridge and charge every person who crossed. The Commissioners protested but could do nothing except beat the company's price down, and "a large delegation of Ocean City people was here last Tuesday" fearing the bridge would be made a toll bridge. It is the clearest evidence yet of what the automobile was doing to Ocean City before any road reached it: the wooden company bridge over Sinepuxent Bay was already carrying enough motor traffic in 1915 to need watchmen, and the county was buying free passage for the public a year before the State's own bridge opened.

    Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

14. 1916

    Before the bridge, every car, wagon and pedestrian reaching Ocean City crossed on the railroad's own wooden drawbridge — rails, frogs and switches standing proud of the flooring.

    The preamble to Chapter 665 of 1916 is the most exact description of the crossing the campaign has: "the only bridge spanning Sinepuxent Bay and furnishing the sole connection between Ocean City and the main land is an old wooden drawbridge, owned and controlled by the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway Company, which bridge is too narrow at the draw to permit two vehicles to pass, and elsewhere is too narrow for safety; and ... said bridge carries the main tracks of said railroad and the rails, frogs and switches of the said railroad project several inches above the flooring of said bridge, thereby obstructing the way and making the use of the said bridge unsafe for vehicles of any kind; and the use of said bridge by pedestrians and vehicles is further interrupted and made more hazardous by the frequent passage of trains, which occupy the whole bridge space." The legislature adds that the railway allowed the public across only "when not occupied by its own trains." Senator Orlando Harrison told the *Messenger* in August that Worcester County "had furnished a bridge across this bay for the past thirty years" and paid the Ocean City Bridge Company an annual county appropriation for it.

    Forty years of the railroad resort in one sentence: the town existed at the railroad's pleasure, and so did the road to it.

    Train Depot SiteBaltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

15. 1916 · 1916-11-15

    The town sells Ocean City lots at the Atlantic Hotel on 15 November 1916 to satisfy corporation taxes unpaid since 1913.

    Advertised in the *Democratic Messenger* through October and November 1916: "Collector's Sale OF Ocean City Properties FOR Corporation Taxes ... Under and by virtue of the power of sale conferred upon the undersigned by law as Collector of Corporation Taxes for Ocean City, Worcester County, Maryland, for the years 1913, 1914 and 1915, the undersigned will sell at Public Auction at the Atlantic Hotel in said Ocean City, Maryland, on WEDNESDAY, November 15th, 1916, at 2 o'clock P. M., to satisfy the Corporation taxes aforesaid, duly levied by the Mayor and Council of Ocean City, Maryland, with interests and costs." The lots named are Lot 10, Block 17 South, assessed to Daniel J. Logan; Lot 8, Block [—] South, to Mrs. J. A. V. Reid; Lots 11 and 12, Block 7 South, to John Carroll; and a lot in Block [—] South to William Lee Carey. Separately, the 1916 county levy allowed "Mayor and City Council Ocean City, on account, $200.00," and carried an annual appropriation to the Ocean City Bridge Company under "Bridges and Ferries."

    Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.

    Atlantic Hotel

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

16. 1917

    The Sinepuxent Bay highway bridge is still being built in 1917: 1,200 feet of bridge, a 3,000-foot approach, and an estimated $110,000.

    The Cambridge Daily Banner of 14 September 1917, under "WORK ON OCEAN CITY BRIDGE PROGRESSING — Splendid Structure Will Soon Adorn Maryland's Favorite Seaside Resort": "Work is progressing on the Ocean City bridge, which, when completed, will be quite an improvement to the resort. The total length of the bridge will be 1,200 feet, the approach to the bridge will be 3,000 feet. The estimated cost is $110,000, as follows: one draw span, 60 feet in clear, $30,000; 1 draw pier in 20 feet of water, $8,000..." In April the Messenger had reported Senator Orlando Harrison calling attention to "the new bridge at Ocean City, which he says is being constructed in a splendid manner and which, when completed will be an important link in the State Roads system to Baltimore from Ocean City," and in September Harrison's re-election platform led with "To see that the bridge at Ocean City is completed at the earliest possible date." A rival candidate, William D. Corddry, wrote in the same paper that "while there was no specific appropriation for the Ocean City bridge, it was generally understood that the Administration measure providing for a bond issue of $3,000,000 should cover this work." The county was already paying: the 1917 levy carries "Ocean City Bridge Co. app'n $1,200," up from the $500 of 1913. The campaign's era boundary treats the bay bridge as a 1916 event; the 1917 record says plainly that it was still under construction, still unfinished, and still an election issue in the autumn of 1917.

    Orlando Harrison

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

17. 1918

    The 1918 General Assembly passes nothing about Ocean City except a $10.93 refund to its toll bridge company.

    The General Assembly sat from 2 January to 1 April 1918 (session 309; Archives of Maryland, Session Laws, volume 486). A full-text search of the volume returns exactly two hits for Ocean City, and they are the same item: the general appropriation act, Ch. 200, refunding money to the "OCEAN CITY BRIDGE COMPANY" -- $10.93, listed on p. 561 between George H. Cullison's $15.20 and William H. Medford's $115.90. Worcester County's own 1918 legislation was about land-record indexing (Ch. 246), Pocomoke City, and the incorporation of the Derrickson Methodist Episcopal Church. There is no health or quarantine act naming the town, and there could not be: the session adjourned on 1 April and the influenza did not reach the Eastern Shore until the end of September.

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

18. 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.

    Maryland State Roads CommissionOrlando Harrison

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

19. 1919

    What driving into Ocean City used to mean: "Not infrequently the driver of a car reached the middle of the bridge to find that a locomotive was coming from the other end to meet him."

    The Annapolis Evening Capital, 26 June 1919, explaining to its readers why the new bridge mattered: "Formerly the only bridge by which Ocean City could be entered was a railroad bridge and this was in very bad condition. Not infrequently the driver of a car reached the middle of the bridge to find that a locomotive was coming from the other end to meet him. Such instances were somewhat thrilling, and serious accidents were avoided only by the exercise of caution on the parts of both the railroad" men and the motorist. It is the clearest description the campaign has found of what motoring into Ocean City was actually like before May 1919.

    For roughly a decade, the way to drive to Ocean City was to share a single-track railroad bridge with trains, and hope.

    Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

20. 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.

    Maryland State Roads CommissionOrlando Harrison

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

21. 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.

    Maryland State Roads Commission

    Source · checked 2026-08-06