Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad
railroad · active chartered 1848; built 1867-68; Salisbury-Berlin in operation 1868; absorbed into the BC&A system c. 1890
Also known as W&P; W. & P. Railroad
The 23-mile Eastern Shore line from Salisbury to Berlin, in operation by 1868 and running trains through 1869 — when it logged its first accident, a cow that put the locomotive through a trestle bridge. In October 1869 the company broke ground on an extension from Salisbury down to the Wicomico River, tying the line to the Baltimore steamboats and creating the boat-and-rail route by which the first Ocean City visitors would reach the coast. It reported gross earnings of $24,715.18 and net of $7,474.71 in its fourth annual report (1870). Maryland's Chapter 102 of 1872 empowered it to extend to any point on Sinepuxent Bay — the legal precondition for Ocean City's railroad — and in 1874–76 it built the last miles east, crossing to the brand-new town on a pivot bridge in 1876. It was later folded into the Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic system.
The resort's future artery, in 1869 still stopping eight miles short of the sand.
In the record (47)
1869
The Delaware Railroad's annual report records the Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad, Salisbury to Berlin, as completed.
Summarizing the Delaware Railroad's annual report, the Middletown Transcript of January 16, 1869 reported: "The Wicomico and Pocomoke Rail Road connecting Berlin with Salisbury has been completed during the past year." The 23-mile line put Berlin — eight miles from the empty barrier beach — on the peninsula rail network for the first time. It would not reach the beach until the town existed; the first train crossed Sinepuxent Bay to Ocean City in 1876.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1869
Ground is broken in October on the Wicomico & Pocomoke's extension to the Wicomico River — the link that would put the beach a steamboat ride from Baltimore.
The Daily National Intelligencer of October 20, 1869 reported that "the extension of the Wicomico and Pocomoke railroad to the Wicomico river has been commenced. The ground was broken near the depot at this place on Wednesday last, and the work will be pushed through with all possible speed. Mr. J. B. Wingate is the engineer and Mr. Samuel McMullen will superintend the grading and track laying." The short extension carried the Salisbury–Berlin line down to tidewater and the Baltimore steamboats — the route by which the first generation of Ocean City visitors would actually reach the coast: steamer to Salisbury, then rail east.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1869 · 1869-06-25
The new Salisbury–Berlin railroad has its first accident: a cow on the track drops the locomotive through a trestle bridge.
The Delaware Tribune of July 1, 1869 reported that on the previous Friday morning "the new Wicomico Pocomoke Railroad, running from Salisbury to Berlin, met with its first accident." The morning train from Berlin was within two miles of Salisbury when the locomotive struck a cow that had got on the track and fell through a trestle bridge; the engine was thrown from the rails, bounded from the road-bed and rolled down a steep embankment, the engineer and fireman springing clear in time to save their lives. The tender and a lumber car also derailed; the rest of the train stayed on the track.
The line that would one day carry the whole resort trade started its accident ledger with a cow.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1870
The Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad's fourth annual report: $24,715.18 gross, $7,474.71 net — a country line that "demonstrates the feasibility of running branch railroads here to profit."
The Middletown Transcript of August 6, 1870 summarized the report of the president and directors: total gross earnings $24,715.18, expenses $17,241.46, net earnings $7,474.71, all earned "under adverse conditions, in consequence of the repeated failure of crops." This is the road — Col. Lemuel Showell of Berlin its founding president — that already ran the 23 miles from Salisbury to Berlin, and whose extension to the Wicomico River had been broken ground in October 1869. It is also the only reason anyone would later think a beach eight miles east of Berlin could be a resort. Set beside the fiscal-1871 figures ($23,059.01 gross, $8,847.77 net), 1870 was the better gross year and the worse net one: the railroad's traffic was falling while its economy improved.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1871 · 1871-07-08
The Wicomico & Pocomoke agrees to run the Worcester Railroad — the operating deal that puts one company's trains on the whole road toward the beach.
The Cecil Whig of July 8, 1871 reports from Worcester County: "The Worcester Railroad Company commenced on Monday laying its track from Berlin toward Snow Hill, which should be reached in about fourteen weeks. A meeting of the directors was held, and arrangements consummated with the Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad Company to run the Worcester railroad temporarily." The W&P already ran the 23 miles from Salisbury to Berlin. Handing it the Worcester Railroad put a single operator on the rails from the main line through Berlin — the company and the corridor that would carry the first train to Ocean City in 1876.
Worcester RailroadCol. Lemuel Showell
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1871 · 1871-07-26
Worcester County casts its four votes for Lemuel Showell of Berlin for Governor of Maryland — the man who would build the railroad to the beach.
The Maryland Democratic State Convention met at Baltimore in July 1871 and nominated William Pinkney Whyte of Baltimore for Governor. The Smyrna Times of July 26 reports the Eastern Shore's failed claim on the nomination: the Western Shore voted solidly for Whyte, most of the Eastern Shore for Judge Carmichael of Easton, "Somerset voted for Dr. Dennis, of Princess Anne, and Worcester for Lemuel Showell of Berlin, each receiving four votes, Wicomico giving them one vote each." Showell was the Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad's founding president and its largest investor; four years later his line would be extended to the Sinepuxent shore and across it to the new town of Ocean City.
Four votes, in a convention that had already decided. But the record shows Worcester County's men putting up the Berlin railroad man as their candidate for Governor in 1871 — before he had a resort to be famous for.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1871 · 1871-10-11
"A Railroad from Berlin, Md., to Georgetown is now the talk in lower Sussex" — Delaware eyeing a line down to the Worcester County corner.
The Smyrna Times of October 11, 1871, in its Delaware state-and-local column: "A Railroad from Berlin, Md., to Georgetown is now the talk in lower Sussex." Berlin was the end of the Wicomico & Pocomoke's line from Salisbury and, that autumn, the working end of the Worcester Railroad being laid to Snow Hill. Talk of a northward connection into Sussex County put the little Worcester town at the centre of two rail schemes at once. No 1871 charter or company for a Berlin-Georgetown line has been traced here.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1873
The Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad's sixth annual report: $33,966.42 gross, $19,706.85 expenses, and a lumber-and-berry freight list from a county about to build a resort.
The railroad that would carry Ocean City into existence published its sixth annual report in early September 1873. Total earnings were $33,966.42 against expenses of $19,706.85. The freight moving over the 23 miles from Salisbury to Berlin was the Eastern Shore's whole economy in a column of figures: 8,477,507 feet of lumber, 97,873 bushels of shingles, 441,250 lbs of grain, 150,113 lbs of live stock, 486,938 lbs of poultry and berries, 'beside eggs, fish, oysters, &c. in large quantities,' plus 6,391,555 lbs of inbound freight. Two years earlier the same road had grossed $23,059.01; it was growing fast, and its president had just promised to run it to the beach.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1873 · 1873-07-18
July 1873: a party of prominent Marylanders meets on Synepuxent Beach opposite Berlin to plan a $25,000 summer hotel — the meeting that becomes Ocean City.
In the third week of July 1873 a delegation that included United States Senator George R. Dennis, the Hon. William T. Hamilton, State Comptroller Levin Woolford, Robert Fowler and a state senator whose name the papers print as 'I. M. Denson' crossed to the barrier beach opposite Berlin, Worcester County, 'with the view to locating there a fine large summer hotel, which will cost about $25,000.' Robert Fowler offered to give $5,000; Dr. H. R. Pitts, president of the Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad, pledged the extension of that road to the beach. Committees on site and on subscriptions were appointed and the meeting adjourned. A companion notice a week earlier described 'a party of prominent gentlemen from Baltimore, Philadelphia and elsewhere' visiting Berlin 'for the purpose of building a handsome hotel on Synepuxent Beach.' The press pitch was already fully formed: the beach 'pronounced one of the finest in the world — comparing favorably with the celebrated Galveston beach,' a forty-mile drive at low tide, splendid surf-bathing, and a safe bay behind for sailing and fishing. Two years later that hotel opened as the Atlantic and the committee's chosen name for the place was Ocean City.
Ocean City's origin story usually starts on July 4, 1875 with the Atlantic Hotel's front door. The paper trail starts here — a committee meeting on an empty beach in the summer of 1873, with a railroad president promising track and a Baltimore money man promising $5,000.
Atlantic HotelAtlantic Hotel Company
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1873 · 1873-09-30
The Worcester Railroad's third annual statement — three stations, 18,263 bushels of oysters, and two papers that can't agree whether it made money.
The Worcester Railroad — the Salisbury-and-Berlin line's extension down to Snow Hill, operated under contract by the Wicomico & Pocomoke — published its third annual statement in late September 1873, covering ten months and twenty days. Gross earnings $10,029.40½, expenses $7,694.13½ (of which $7,111.11½ went to the W. & P. Co. for operating the road), net earnings $2,835.36½. Over three stations it shipped 21,931 bushels of grain, 1,605,300 feet of lumber, 39,510 lbs of berries and 18,263 bushels of oysters. The Wilmington editor thought that remarkable: 'There [is no] older Peninsula R. R. which can show a better annual statement than this.' Three weeks earlier the same paper's own Berlin correspondent had written that the Worcester road 'failed to pay expenses by five hundred dollars.'
the Snow Hill branch's first full year was reported as both a small profit and a small loss
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1873 · 1873-10-21
A month after the Panic of 1873, the beach scheme is still alive: the 'Synepuxent R.R.' has nearly enough money in hand and lumber is being gathered for buildings on the beach.
The Berlin letter of October 21, 1873 — published under the standing head 'SYNEPUXENT R. R.' — reports that the road has nearly sufficient funds in hand to complete it, that work has commenced, and that lumber is 'being gathered together this fall and coming winter for the buildings [on] the beach.' The Panic of 1873 had begun with Jay Cooke & Co.'s failure on September 18 and closed the New York Stock Exchange for ten days; the same Wilmington paper was reporting bank suspensions rippling out through Pennsylvania that autumn. The Worcester County beach venture wobbled but did not die: the Wicomico & Pocomoke did not begin building toward the coast until 1874, and the hotel opened July 4, 1875.
The national economy fell over in September 1873 and a country railroad on the Eastern Shore just kept stacking lumber. That two-year lag between the 1873 plan and the 1875 opening is the Panic, priced in.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1874 · 1874-04-11
Maryland lets the Wicomico & Pocomoke borrow $100,000 to build from Berlin to the beach — and to build wharves and piers there.
Chapter 254 of the Acts of 1874, approved April 11, 1874, re-enacted section 3 of the railroad's 1870 supplement so that "the President and Directors of the Wicomico and Pocomoke Rail Road Company … are hereby authorized and empowered, for the purpose of constructing the said addition of their road from the town of Berlin to the Bay Shore or Beach aforesaid, building wharves, piers, and any other incidental work necessary for the full and beneficial enjoyment of said franchise, to negotiate a loan, and to issue bonds … for an amount not exceeding one hundred thousand dollars." The bonds were made a first lien on the new work and a prior lien on the earnings of the main stem from Berlin to Salisbury, subject only to the existing first mortgage. Where 1872's chapter 102 gave the company the legal right to reach Sinepuxent Bay, 1874's chapter 254 gave it the money. The act's title recites the whole charter chain: December session 1847, then 1864 ch. 116, 1868 ch. 266 and 1870 ch. 304.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1874 · 1874-07-28
About a hundred men are pushing the seaside railroad toward the beach in July 1874 — and talking a strike over $1.10 a day.
The Berlin correspondent "Occasional" wrote on July 28, 1874: "About a hundred [men are] employed pushing the seaside railroad, and they work with considerable vim … talking a 'strike,' their wages only being $1.10, but it is uncertain whether they will do it." The correspondent disapproved: "They should not … for the reason that they bargained to [work at] present wages. Then 'strikes' seldom pay." This is the earliest contemporary count of the labor force that built Ocean City's railroad, and the earliest documented daily wage on the project.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1874 · 1874-10-01
On October 1, 1874 the Worcester Locomotive Company takes the Berlin–Snow Hill road out of the Wicomico & Pocomoke's hands.
The Berlin correspondent, writing October 26, 1874: the Worcester Railroad running from Berlin to Snow Hill "ha[d] been [operated] by the W. & P. until the 1st inst., when the Worcester Locomotive Co. took control of it." The new company had ordered rolling stock — and the car leased to the Newtown road was withdrawn "because the latter road failed to pay the rent." Three weeks earlier a Wilmington paper had noted that "the new engine for the Worcester R. R. is being fixed up at Berlin." The same letter sets out Dr. Hammond of Newtown's rival scheme for a coastal trunk line from Cape Charles to the Delaware Breakwater, fighting "the Delaware, Eastern Shore and W. & P. roads," with the Old Dominion Steamship Line behind him.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1874 · 1874-10-29
October 1874: the Wicomico & Pocomoke is expected to run through to Synepuxent Bay "in about ten days."
The Wilmington Daily Commercial of October 29, 1874, quoting the Salisbury Bachelor: "it is expected that the Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad will run through to Synepuxent Bay in about ten days." Six weeks earlier the Berlin correspondent had written that "the W. & P. extension is nearly [complete]," adding that when one of the road's projectors was asked whether it would pay he answered, "Yes, for we shall then [have] all the rock fish that is caught along shore." The rails reached the bay shore opposite the beach in late 1874 or early 1875; the pivot bridge across to the island came later.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1874 · 1874-12-23
By December 1874 "a fine hotel is now being built" on the new beach — with a Baltimore night boat promising breakfast at the shore.
Reporting a new steamboat arrangement for the Eastern Shore, the Wilmington Daily Commercial of December 23, 1874 wrote that "the Baltimore people will secure quick communication along the Atlantic coast of the Eastern Shore [for] visiting the new beach in Worcester county, [near] Berlin, where a fine hotel is now being built. Leaving Baltimore in the evening, by boat, they will be at the beach for breakfast." A new boat was then in frame and partly plated at the Harlan & Hollingsworth yard in Wilmington, to be ready "early the coming season." The Atlantic Hotel opened July 4, 1875; this is contemporary evidence that construction was under way in 1874 and that the overnight-boat-plus-rail package to the beach was being sold before the town had a name.
Atlantic HotelAtlantic Hotel Company
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1875
The economy that paid for the beach: 300,000 quarts of strawberries out of Berlin in one season, and a berry crop worth $100,000 to Wicomico County.
A letter from Ocean City to the Wilmington Gazette, reprinted in July 1875, reported that during the season just past over 300,000 quarts of strawberries had been shipped from Berlin, with blackberries, raspberries and whortleberries going north car after car. The Salisbury Advertiser put Wicomico County's berry crop alone at over $100,000 for the year. The same column noted the freight-rate war: the Old Dominion Steamship Company, having bought control of the Worcester Railway, had built from the Delaware line to Berlin and connected through Lewes to New York by boat, and rates had fallen on the Wicomico & Pocomoke and every other peninsula road. "And yet some say that railways are no advantage."
Ocean City was floated on berries. The railroads that carried strawberries to New York are the same railroads that carried Baltimoreans to the beach.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1875 · 1875-07-24
How you got to Ocean City in its first summer: rail by way of Wilmington, or a Baltimore steamer to Crisfield and the Eastern Shore railroad.
Baltimore's German daily Der Deutsche Correspondent told its readers on July 24, 1875 how to reach the new resort: the place is reached by rail via Wilmington, or by the steamers running from Baltimore to Crisfield and then the eastern railroad. A Delaware editor the same week described "a railroad right up to the back door" — the Wicomico & Pocomoke's extension had reached the bay shore opposite the beach, and passengers crossed the last stretch by boat. The direct rail bridge across Sinepuxent Bay into town was still years off. Well into the autumn, the Old Dominion Steamship Company's new Worcester Railway line from the Delaware state line to Berlin, connecting to the Lewes–New York boats, was cutting freight rates across the whole peninsula.
The first tourists came by train, boat, and boat again. Ocean City's whole first season ran on other people's infrastructure.
rail reached the bay shore opposite the town by 1875 or 1878 — sources differ
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1875 · 1875-08-31
August 31, 1875: a blindfolded boy pulls names from a hat and Ocean City's first 111 lots are handed out to the Atlantic Hotel Company's stockholders.
On Tuesday, August 31, 1875, excursion trains brought about two hundred people over to Ocean City and the directors of the Atlantic Hotel Company arranged the drawing for lots. "It was decided that each stockholder was entitled to a lot, those having the greater number of shares having the first choice. The names of each stockholder having an equal amount of stock were put into the hat at a time, and the names drawn out by a boy who was blindfolded." Hon. James U. Dennis's name came out first; he was absent, and his brother U. S. Senator George R. Dennis chose Lot No. 11 for him. Hon. William T. Hamilton's name came next, and Col. Lemuel Showell chose Lot No. 10 for him. Subscribers were sorted into nine classes by the size of their holding — $500 down to $50 — and among them were Governor W. Pinkney Whyte, Comptroller Levin Woolford, E. K. Wilson, E. E. Jackson & Co., Harrison Bro., the Barnum's Hotel Co. of Baltimore, and Wilmington's Wm. Lea & Sons. "One hundred and eleven lots in all" were taken. Afterwards the Wicomico & Pocomoke directors held a meeting, the Salisbury Brass Band played, and the day "wound up by a grand hop at night."
Ocean City's first property transfer was a raffle. The lots weren't sold to the public — they were dealt out to the men who had subscribed the hotel, in order of how much they'd put in.
Atlantic Hotel CompanyGeorge R. DennisWilliam T. HamiltonCol. Lemuel ShowellLevin WoolfordEphraim King Wilson II
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1876
A Wicomico & Pocomoke engine jumps the track and strands the Ocean City passengers at Salisbury for three hours.
"An engine of the Wicomico and Pocomoke railroad jumped the track on Friday last, in consequence of which the regular passenger, mail and Adams Express train was delayed at Salisbury about three hours, much to the discomfort of travelers en route for Ocean City and other points on the road." The item ran in a Wicomico County column in late July 1876 alongside notes that the peach crop had failed and the corn was retrograding from drought, cold nights and scorching sun. Incidentally it is proof that by July 1876 the W&P was running a scheduled passenger, mail and express train with Ocean City on it.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
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."
Source · checked 2026-08-06
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.
Ocean City Bridge CompanyDr. Hilary R. PittsWilliam ShowellCyrus L. WilliamsJohn M. TaylorJohn R. Purnell
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1876 · 1876-05-10
Ocean City's first known product endorsement: the Atlantic Hotel's paint job, vouched for by the railroad president.
A trade notice in the Wilmington Daily Commercial of May 10, 1876 read: "The Atlantic Hotel, at Synepuxent Beach, was painted last summer, with Harrison's Town and Country Ready Mixed Paint, and notwithstanding the effects of the winter weather it shows no depreciation in color or firmness. So says H. R. Pitts, President of the Wicomico [and] Pocomoke R. R. Co." It is a small item that does three useful things: it dates the Atlantic Hotel's painting to the summer of 1875, it shows the new resort already being used as advertising copy 250 miles up the peninsula, and it puts Dr. Hilary R. Pitts in the president's chair of the Wicomico & Pocomoke in May 1876.
Atlantic Hotel CompanyDr. Hilary R. Pitts
Source · checked 2026-08-06
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.
Ocean City Bridge CompanyAtlantic Hotel Company
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1876 · 1876-08-03
August 3, 1876: the first Delaware Railroad excursion train to Ocean City leaves Wilmington with 40 people and reaches the beach with 400.
The Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad's Delaware Division ran its first special excursion train to Ocean City on Thursday, August 3, 1876, leaving Wilmington at 4:20 a.m. and arriving at 9:30 a.m., with a brass band aboard. The Wilmington Daily Gazette reported the next day that the weather in the upper part of the state was so threatening that "only about forty went from Wilmington," but the sky cleared going south and "when Ocean City was reached the sun was shining brightly in an unclouded sky, while the train was filled by about four hundred excursionists." The Smyrna Times added that the train ran ten cars, that Laurel alone sent 150 passengers, and that Smyrna sent exactly one — "the proprietor of Foxwell's hotel." "The beach was filled with bathers nearly all the day, as all the bathers could not be provided with bathing suits at one time, and had to take their turns." After nearly nine hours at the ocean the train started home about six o'clock and reached Wilmington about midnight, "no accident or delay occurring during the trip." A second excursion followed on August 10 and a fourth on August 24.
Ocean City's first mass-tourism day, and the resort ran out of bathing suits.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1877
The railroads open an Excursion House on the sand in July 1877 — a free shelter for Sunday schools and societies, with the trains running to within a hundred feet of the surf.
"The several railroad lines forming the route via Salisbury, Md., are erecting at OCEAN CITY a commodious Excursion House, for the express entertainment of Excursionists, and would particularly invite the attention of Churches, Sunday Schools, Societies, and Organizations generally… Trains run directly on to the beach, within one hundred feet of Excursion House and Surf." The building was announced in June for completion by the 25th, described by the June 28 correspondent as still going up — "where families who visit the resort and bring their dinners with them can go and eat it" — and reported open in the week of July 12: "The excursion house at Ocean City, built by the railroad for the free [use of] excursionists, was opened this week." An ample supply of pleasure boats was kept for hire on the bay side, where the Excursion House stood.
Ocean City's first purpose-built public amenity was not a boardwalk or a bathhouse. It was a shed where people who couldn't afford a hotel dinner could eat the one they brought.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1877
A horse at Parsonsburg drops dead in its traces at the whistle of the Wilmington–Ocean City excursion train.
"Scared to Death. — John D. Perdue's horse was standing hitched to a cart at Parsonsburg, on Thursday, when the excursion train from Wilmington to Ocean City came along. The locomotive and its whistle was too much for the poor horse; when a sharp whistle was made, the horse reared up and fell dead in his tracks." Middletown Transcript, August 11, 1877 — a small casualty of the new weekly beach traffic, on the Wicomico & Pocomoke line a few miles east of Salisbury.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1877
From Baltimore in 1877 you could reach Ocean City by rail in a day — or overnight by steamer to Crisfield and a fast train that got you there for breakfast.
The Baltimore Evening Bulletin, reprinted in the Westminster Democratic Advocate on June 30, 1877, laid out both routes. All-land: the 6:55 a.m. train from President Street depot over the P.W.&B. and its Delaware and Maryland connections, reaching Ocean City about 4 p.m. the same day. By water: "By an arrangement entered into between the Eastern Shore Steamboat Company and the Eastern Shore and Wicomico and Pocomoke railroads, through and round-trip tickets may be purchased… The steamers Helen, Maggie and Tangier, three handsome iron steamers, leave South street wharf every afternoon (Saturday excepted) at 6 o'clock, for Crisfield, where they connect with a special fast train at an early hour the next day, which reaches Ocean City in ample time for breakfast." A slower variant took the Tangier up the Pocomoke to Snow Hill on Tuesday evenings and came in by rail from there. The Baltimore party on the June press excursion took the boat home — from Ocean City at 8:45 for Crisfield, the steamer Maggie at 6:30, Baltimore about 5 the next morning.
Eastern Shore Steamboat Company
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1877
July 1877: the Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad and Western Union string the first telegraph wire from Berlin to Ocean City.
The Delaware Tribune's Maryland column for July 12, 1877 reported: "The Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad Company and the Western Union Telegraph Company are at present engaged in putting up a telegraph line between Berlin and Ocean City, which will be completed in a few days." Two years after the town opened and one year after the rails crossed Sinepuxent Bay, the beach got its first instantaneous connection to the mainland — a railroad operating necessity that doubled as the resort's first communications infrastructure.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1877 · 1877-06-27
June 27, 1877: the first special excursion train to Ocean City leaves Wilmington at 5 a.m. with about thirty passengers and a brass band.
The Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore Railroad advertised "THE FIRST Special Excursion Train — TO — OCEAN CITY" for Wednesday, June 27, 1877, leaving Wilmington at 5:00 a.m. and arriving at Ocean City at 10:00 a.m., returning from Ocean City at about 5:30 p.m. and reaching Wilmington near 11:30 p.m. The Daily Gazette's reporter rode it and filed a column-long travelogue the next afternoon: about thirty passengers boarded at Wilmington with the city Cornet Band, more joined at Kirkwood (three), Clayton (nine), Dover, Harrington and Seaford, and the train ran down the Delaware Railroad to Delmar, then the Wicomico & Pocomoke from Salisbury to the beach. T. Hawkins was conductor and George Cooley the engineer. The company announced an excursion train "every week for the season" — every Wednesday at first, later Thursdays — with the next one on July 4.
Ocean City's third season is the first one you can ride into on a printed timetable. The town was two years old and already had a weekly train from Delaware with a band on board.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1878
The Atlantic Hotel advertises "two daily trains from Wilmington direct to the beach" — two years after Ocean City had one weekly excursion.
John Tracy's 1878 card for the Atlantic Hotel closes with the line the whole resort depended on: "Two daily trains from Wilmington direct to the beach." In 1877 the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore had run one advertised excursion a week down the Delaware Railroad and the Wicomico & Pocomoke; by the summer of 1878 the hotel could sell daily service, and the excursion ads still promised that "first class cars run directly through to the Surf" — the trains crossed the trestle over Sinepuxent Bay and put passengers out on the sand.
Two trains a day from another state, to a town with four cottages three summers earlier.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore RailroadJohn Tracy
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1880 · 1880-07-06
Ocean City's convention trade starts in 1880: several hundred Maryland schoolteachers in July, the Peninsula's newspaper editors in August.
The State Teachers' Association of Maryland took its annual session to the beach for three days, July 6, 7 and 8, 1880, and the terms were published statewide from Garrett County to Harford. A membership ticket cost fifty cents and had to be bought from a county school examiner in advance, because it was what unlocked the travel and board rates: half fare on the Western Maryland Railroad and the steamboat, or full fare good for the round trip, tickets valid July 2 to 13; steamboat fare Baltimore to Ocean City and return, four dollars, leaving the foot of South Street at six every evening but Saturday; rail round trip from Baltimore, six dollars, "good during the season"; and board at the Atlantic Hotel "to members, One Dollar a day for the three days the Association is in session. Afterwards $12.50 a week." A. F. Wilkerson was secretary. The Bel Air correspondent who travelled by steamer to Crisfield and then by rail over the Eastern Shore and Wicomico & Pocomoke roads counted "several hundred teachers and educa[tors]" on the beach and called Ocean City "the Cape May of Maryland, and the most popular watering place in the State." Six weeks later the editors came: "The Peninsular Press Association at its session at Ocean City this week elected the following officers: President — George W. Cruikshank, of Elkton. First Vice President — B. Everett Smith. Second Vice President — D. Taylor Bradford, of this city [Wilmington]. Secretary — W. Scott Way, of Middletown. Treasurer — O. P. Johnson." They would be back the following August, waltzing with the girls and passing resolutions of thanks to the railroad officials and to Congress Hall's Mr. Selby.
A statewide professional convention in July and a regional press association in August, in a town with forty-nine residents. The convention trade is as old as the town charter.
Atlantic HotelState Teachers' Association of MarylandPeninsular Press AssociationEastern Shore Steamboat Company
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1880 · 1880-09-09
Getting to Ocean City in 1880: "8 HOURS AT THE SEA-SHORE" from Wilmington, or an overnight boat from Baltimore — six dollars round trip either way.
The Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore's Thursday excursion out of Wilmington was in its fourth season and had lengthened its stay. The September 1880 advertisement lists the Delaware Division stations and their fares (Middletown $3.61 among them), arrival at Ocean City at 11:00, departure at 5:00 P.M., and the headline that had read 7 HOURS AT THE SEA-SHORE in 1877 now reading "8 HOURS AT THE SEA-SHORE." First-class cars ran "directly through to the surf" — the train went onto the beach. Tickets were good to return by regular train until Monday, September 13, if stamped by the Ocean City ticket agent. H. F. Kenney was still superintendent; Geo. A. Dadmun general ticket agent. A week later the company announced one more: "to run another excursion to Ocean City, the famous watering resort of Maryland, on Thursday next. This will positively be the last opportunity of visiting this resort during the present season" — leaving Wilmington at 6 a.m. and Ocean City at 5 p.m. on Thursday, September 16, 1880. From Baltimore the choice was rail or water, and a West Virginia visitor writing home in August priced both: "Ocean City is distant about two hundred and four miles from Baltimore, by rail via Wilmington, Del., but probably a little more by boat. The fare from Baltimore, by boat to Crisfield, then by rail, is four dollars, or six dollars for the round trip — meals and state room extra. As a general thing passengers prefer the water route, as they can leave Baltimore at 6 p.m. and arrive here at 11:30 a.m. the following day, enjoying a good night's rest and a cool ride on the bay." The Eastern Shore Steamboat Company's boats left the foot of South Street every evening but Saturday at six — a service Baltimore's German-language daily was still puffing to its readers in August as the way to reach "Ocean-City mit seiner reizenden Umgebung."
Atlantic HotelPhiladelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore RailroadEastern Shore Steamboat CompanyH. F. Kenney
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1884 · 1884-04-08
The Delaware, Maryland and Virginia Railroad wins blanket authority to build branch lines off its Worcester County road.
Chapter 346 of the Acts of 1884, approved April 8, empowered the Delaware, Maryland and Virginia Railroad Company "to locate, construct and operate branch railroads from points on its railroad in Worcester county to such convenient points in the State of Maryland as it may determine, subject to the powers heretofore conferred on said company". The same summer the company's expansion was visible on the ground: from Onancock, Virginia, the Delaware Gazette's correspondent reported on August 17 that the new railroad would reach Accomac station within the week and that "an excursion train will be to Ocean City on Sunday next."
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1885
The Pennsylvania Railroad takes the Delmarva Peninsula — and Ocean City's line is one of only two roads it does not own.
Through 1885 the Pennsylvania Railroad absorbed the Delaware, Maryland & Virginia and effectively took control of the peninsula's rail network. The Wilmington Morning News summary, reprinted across the shore in August, put Ocean City on the short list of holdouts: 'The Pennsylvania road has now almost a monopoly of the Peninsula, having under its control all the roads from Chestertown to Bombay Hook, and the short road from Salisbury to Ocean City' — the Wicomico & Pocomoke. Earlier in the year the Eastville Herald reported a rumour that the New York, Philadelphia & Norfolk would take the Wicomico & Pocomoke instead and 'place a fast train on that line between Ocean City and Salisbury.' The August letter-writer in the Aegis wanted more: 'Now that the Pennsylvania R. R. has extended one of its branches so near to this spot, it is to be hoped that it will buy the railroad running from Berlin, through which it passes, to Ocean City, and thus facilitate the travel from this place to our metropolis. If such be the case, the success of Maryland's one seaside resort as a fashionable watering place is assured.'
Everybody understood in 1885 that whoever owned the last four miles of track into Ocean City owned Ocean City's summer. It took another decade for that to be settled.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1886
The Baltimore & Eastern Shore Railway is chartered with Ocean City as its "extreme eastern terminus" — a straight run to Baltimore at last.
For a decade the only way from Baltimore to Ocean City was the long way, up the peninsula to Wilmington and back down, or boat-and-rail by way of Salisbury. In February 1886 the Maryland legislature took up a charter for a line from St. Michael's in Talbot County to Salisbury in Wicomico, to connect with the Annapolis Short Line and, at Salisbury, with the Wicomico & Pocomoke to Ocean City; Speaker Joseph B. Seth of Talbot reckoned it would put Salisbury three and a half hours from Baltimore and Ocean City four. The Evening Capital printed the projected mileage in April: Ocean City to Salisbury, Salisbury to Sharptown 12 miles, Sharptown to Easton, Easton to St. Michael's 10, St. Michael's to Bay Shore 4, Bay Shore to Bay Ridge 12 by transfer steamer, Bay Ridge to Annapolis 5, Annapolis to Baltimore 22 — "the distance by the road from Baltimore to Ocean City is 121 miles." Baltimore City was authorized to endorse $500,000 of the bonds. By September 8 the company had secured its right of way in Wicomico County and "Ocean City is the extreme eastern terminus of the road"; by October 6 subcontracts had been let and the contractors were "telegraphing for engineers and laborers," hoping to finish forty to sixty miles that season. This line, with its bay transfer steamer, became the Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic — the railway that carried Ocean City for the next forty-seven years.
Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1886
Col. Lemuel Showell thinks about putting a steamer on the bay to haul Chincoteague oysters up to the Ocean City railhead.
"A correspondent of the Baltimore Sun at Salisbury, Md., says that Col. Lemuel Showell, president of the Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad, is thinking seriously of placing a steamer on the bay to make trips from Chincoteague Island up to Ocean City. The oystermen in the bay now have to carry their oysters a long distance to a railroad, and he thinks if a steamer is placed on the route hundreds of barrels of oysters would be carried each trip to Ocean City, where they would be placed on cars and carried over the Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad to Salisbury." Earlier in the year the Cecil Whig had reported the other end of the trade: "The oyster farmers on the Synepuxent Bay are complaining of the low price of oysters in Philadelphia."
Ocean City as a freight depot, not a resort — the president of the railroad looking at forty miles of oyster bottom and seeing a shipping point.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1887 · 1887-09-23
Worcester County's State's Attorney is clubbed insensible at his own gate, and fifty Berlin men charter a train to run down the suspect.
On the night of Friday, September 23, 1887, Col. Levin L. Dirickson, State's Attorney for Worcester County, was beaten with a club near the gate of his home on the outskirts of Berlin. E. F. Furbush found him lying unconscious about ten o'clock, where he appeared to have crawled. A severe scalp wound was the only injury; nothing was taken but a $2.50 gold piece, and the supposition was revenge for his vigor in prosecuting. He was still unconscious the following day and his condition was called critical. Suspicion fell on Handy Rayne, a Black man said to hold a grudge; when the town found he had bought a ticket from Berlin to Salisbury, fifty Berlin citizens chartered a special train on the Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad — the superintendent himself in charge — and took him there. He confessed. A Snow Hill special to the Philadelphia Press wrote that had he been caught first "there is but little doubt that he would be summarily" dealt with. He was sentenced at Snow Hill in late October to ten years in the penitentiary.
Two years earlier the same L. L. Dirickson had stood on the beach and welcomed the state's schoolteachers to Ocean City in the Governor's place. This is the other half of the county he spoke for.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1887 · 1887-10-04
Col. Lemuel Showell — first president of the railroad that made Ocean City — fails, with $70,000 of liabilities against five thousand acres of Worcester County.
On October 4, 1887 a Wilmington special to the New-York Tribune reported that "Colonel Lemuel Showell, living at Showell's Station, Md.," had made an assignment that morning: liabilities $70,000; assets five thousand acres of land in Worcester County. The paper described him as a large vessel-owner in the coastwise trades who had inherited $250,000 from his father. Showell was the largest original investor in and first president of the Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad, a founder of the Atlantic Hotel, and the man whose family name the village of Showell still carries.
The resort survived 1887. The man who built the railroad to it did not — not financially.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Atlantic Hotel CompanyCol. Lemuel Showell
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1888 · 1888-06-27
The only railroad to Ocean City is sold on the courthouse steps and passes to its bondholders — and into the Baltimore & Eastern Shore's orbit.
George W. Purnell of Snow Hill was appointed trustee to sell the Wicomico & Pocomoke Railroad and filed his bond in the Circuit Court on May 24, 1888 in the sum of $300,000 — "by far the largest bond ever filed in this county." The advertisement described the property plainly: "all the real and personal estate, property and franchises of every kind and description, including Road Bed, Rolling Stock, Depots, Grounds... The said Railroad being located in Worcester and Wicomico Counties... and is the only Railroad leading to Ocean City." The sale was held in front of the Atlantic Hotel in Berlin on Wednesday, June 27, 1888. Bidding opened around twenty-one thousand dollars and the road "was struck off, the purchasers being the bondholders, who have perfected an agreement with the Baltimore and Eastern Shore Railroad Company to run it in their interest." Gen. J. B. Seth, president of the B.&E.S., was among the railroad men present. Through June the county had been betting the Pennsylvania would buy it and "put on fast trains, which will be a big boom for Ocean City"; the Pennsylvania did not, but a month later a fast daily express was running anyway.
Train Depot SiteGeorge W. Purnell
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1888 · 1888-08-24
Somebody lays a log across the rails in front of the evening train to Ocean City.
"An attempt was made to wreck the train which left Salisbury for Ocean City last Friday at 6:40 p.m. Fortunately the engineer saw the danger in time to stop the train and remove a large log from across the track." The item reached the Snow Hill Democratic Messenger from the Wicomico News on September 1, 1888. No arrest, motive or follow-up appears in any source read — but it is the first documented crime against the Ocean City railroad, in the same summer that the railroad changed owners and started running fast.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1889
A spring gale floods the island, strands a rescue party at the bay bridge — and leaves the beach flatter and closer to the Atlantic's porch than before.
Two reports a week apart describe the same spring weather from opposite ends. On April 6 the Messenger's Ocean City correspondent wrote that "the recent storm which did so much damage on the New Jersey coast did no damage at Ocean City; in fact, it did a great deal of good, as those unsightly sand hills are leveled and the beach is nearly smooth, making a clean level appearance. You may step from the beach on the Atlantic's porch, where it was three feet from the sand last year." On April 13 the paper described the fright at Berlin during the storm itself: "so great was their fear that Supt. Henry of the W. & P. R. R. and about fifty other gentlemen went down on a train as far as the bay-side, but the wind was blowing so strong it was thought unsafe to run the train over the long bridge, so the party got off and walked over to the beach. It was a hard struggle for them to keep their footing... The beach was almost submerged, yet there was enough sand left to allow the party to take a promenade... Ocean City is indeed fortunate to have escaped with so little damage." The same storm blew the Snow Hill steamer Helen ashore near Onancock and capsized boats across the Chesapeake.
The dunes that were an eyesore in April were the only thing between the hotels and the ocean in September. Nobody said so at the time.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1889
Nine hundred Black excursionists ride the Cape Charles line to Ocean City for the day — the largest documented Black excursion in the town's first fifteen years.
The Democratic Messenger of September 7, 1889 reported: "An excursion party composed of about nine hundred colored people visited Ocean City Saturday from Cape Charles City and other points along the line of the New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk Railroad. After spending the day at the seaside the excursionists embarked for [home], leaving behind one of their number" — a man who, having missed the train, started to walk the Wicomico & Pocomoke toward Salisbury, lay down on the track about two miles east of Berlin and was run over by the Washington express coming down to Ocean City that evening. He was never identified. A month earlier the same paper's Ocean City correspondent had reported that "Mary Shockley, one of the colored excursionists to this place from Salisbury, was run over and horribly mutilated last Friday while endeavoring to cross the track before a backing train. Her leg was broken at the thigh and her left hand crushed." Excursion trains, not hotels, were how Black Marylanders and Virginians reached this beach; the Ocean City hotels of 1889 did not admit them, and a Snow Hill business notice in the same paper advertised as a selling point that "it is the desire of the proprietors to have no colored people employed in their establishment."
Nine hundred people in one day is a bigger crowd than any hotel on the island could hold, and they came and went between trains because there was nowhere on that beach for them to stay. The excursion is the whole story of Black Ocean City in 1889 — and its casualties happened in the rail yard, not the surf.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1889
The Peninsula Express starts running a through coach to Ocean City — no change of cars from Washington or Baltimore.
1889 is the year the trip stopped requiring a transfer. On June 29 the Democratic Messenger announced: "On and after to-day the Peninsula Express will run through from Baltimore to Ocean City without change. The train leaves Union Street Station... at 2.30 P. M. and arrives at Ocean City at 7.33 P. M. This arrangement greatly improves the service between Baltimore and Maryland's popular seaside resort." Three weeks later the Evening Star made the same point for its own readers: "Ocean City Nearer to Washington than ever — Ocean City, Md., is nearer to Washington than ever, since the Baltimore and Potomac railroad has inaugurated its through train service... The Peninsula express leaves for Ocean City, Baltimore and Potomac station at 1:17 p.m. week days," a train that "carries a through coach for Ocean City, and connects closely for Rehoboth." The older routes stayed in service: the Maryland Steamboat Company still ran nightly from Pier 4, Light Street, Baltimore, down the bay and up the Wicomico to Salisbury, thence by the Wicomico & Pocomoke, with a Saturday-evening excursion giving seven hours at Ocean City and two nights' sleep aboard, round trip $4.50.
Four hours and change from Baltimore, five and a bit from Washington, and you never left your seat. The resort's whole future turned on that.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1890 · 1890-07-01
July 1, 1890: four railroads are consolidated into one 108-mile system running from Annapolis to Ocean City.
'President J. B. Seth, of the Eastern Shore Railroad Company and Mr. J. E. Cowen, counsel of the B. & O. R. R., arranged yesterday at Baltimore for the consolidating of the line of railroads running from Annapolis to Ocean City, Md.,' the Annapolis Evening Capital reported on July 2. The four were the Bay Ridge road (Annapolis to Bay Ridge, five miles); the one-mile road with terminals at Bay Ridge and Claiborne, owned by the Chesapeake Terminal Company; the Baltimore and Eastern Shore Railroad from Claiborne to Salisbury; and the Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad, thirty-one miles from Salisbury to Ocean City. 'The total length of the consolidated roads is 108 miles, including the bay crossing, and the entire system will be bonded for $1,600,000 at 5 per cent.' Seth and Theophilus Tunis represented the Eastern Shore and the Wicomico & Pocomoke; Cowen represented the Bay Ridge road and the Chesapeake Terminal Company. Poor's Manual for 1891 confirms the terms from the company's own returns: consolidated 5 per cent thirty-year gold bonds dated July 1, 1890, $1,600,000 authorised and $1,400,000 outstanding that October, against capital stock of $1,000,000 authorised and $300,000 paid in. This is the corporate act behind org:bca-railway — the moment the separate shore lines that had crept toward the beach since the 1860s became a single railway pointed at Ocean City.
One deal in a Baltimore office turned four little railroads into the artery that made Ocean City a resort for the whole state.
Train Depot SiteBaltimore and Eastern Shore RailroadBaltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic Railway
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1893 · 1893-08-03
R. J. Henry dies at Berlin, and his obituary credits him with Col. Lemuel Showell as the man who got Ocean City started.
The Westminster Democratic Advocate of 12 August 1893, in its Maryland column: 'R. J. Henry, a prominent citizen of Wicomico county, residing in Berlin, died on August 3, aged about 70 years. He had a large circle of acquaintances throughout Maryland, Delaware and Virginia. He served as superintendent of the Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad from the time of its commencing operation until it changed hands, about three years ago. He was one of the first persons to advocate the establishment of a watering place on the beach, and out of his efforts and those of Col. Lemuel Showell, then president of the railroad, Ocean City was given a start.' The campaign has always told the founding through Showell, Taber and the 1875 excursion. This is a contemporary obituary naming a second man beside Showell, and placing him in the operating end of the railroad rather than the boardroom.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1899
Ocean City sues its own railroad for unpaid taxes and wins in the Court of Appeals — and the State promptly uses the ruling to claim $60,000 from the same company.
The Democratic Messenger of 18 March 1899 reported the decision: "Judge Briscoe rendered the opinion in the suit brought by the mayor and city council of Ocean City against the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway Company to recover certain taxes alleged to be due and unpaid by the defendant company … The principal question presented by the appeal is whether the property formerly owned by the Wicomico and Pocomoke Railroad in Ocean City, and now owned by the appellant company, is exempt from taxation, under section 2 of chapter 133 of the acts of 1886. The court says: 'We are of the opinion that the property of the defendant company … is liable for taxation, and, for the reasons we have given, the court committed no error in rejecting the appellant's prayers, so the judgment will be affirmed.'" The Messenger returned to it on 26 August under the head "Claims $60,000 Taxes": the old Eastern Shore Railroad had been exempt under its charter, the new owners "refused to pay taxes to the city authorities of Ocean City," the suit "was instituted by Mayor C. J. Purnell, and Councilmen Powell, Dennis and Adkins and resulted in a verdict in their favor, by the Court of Appeals," and State Tax Collector Parlett was now claiming $60,000 in state taxes on the strength of it, against the company's attorney's denial.
A resort of a few hundred winter residents took the railway that made it to Maryland's highest court, and beat it — and Annapolis then followed the town through the door it had opened.
Baltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic RailwayThe Commissioners of Ocean CityClayton J. PurnellJames Z. PowellDavid J. Adkins
Source · checked 2026-08-06