Gilbert Cropper

In the record (3)

1. 1894 · 1894-03-10

   Gilbert Cropper moves his bath houses further back from the ocean and builds a two-storey front to live in.

   Democratic Messenger, Ocean City column, March 10, 1894: "Mr. G. B. Cropper is moving his bath houses further back and intends to build a nice two story front to them which will be used as a dwelling house for his family." It is the same retreat from the surf that had already moved whole buildings back in 1889 — the ocean taking the beach a few feet at a time, and the town's businesses walking inland ahead of it. Cropper's bath house at South Division Street, later nicknamed the "Hotel De Cropper," burned in the arson-blamed fire of April 1901.

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

2. 1897 · 1897-10-26

   "The worst in the memory of the oldest inhabitant" — an October gale runs four feet of surf across the beach and washes away the board walk south of Trimper's.

   Under the headline "THE TERRIFIC GALE — Havoc Wrought at Ocean City and Other Places on the Coast," the Wilmington Evening Journal printed a dispatch datelined "OCEAN CITY, Md., Oct. 26": "The storm of the last two days was the worst in the memory of the oldest inhabitant. The wind attained the proportions of a hurricane, and the surf ran four feet deep across the beach into Sinepuxent bay. The board walk south from Trimper's hotel is entirely washed away for some distance, and north from the same point it is broken in places. The large porches of Congress hall, Trimper's, the Eastern Shore hotel, Cropper's pavilion, Atlantic hotel and Meyer cottage are completely wrecked. The immense fishpound of the Ocean City Fishing company was carried out to sea. The Cambridge hotel was nearly wrecked. A large two-masted schooner was sunk in the bay after being driven against the drawbridge. The damage will reach thousands of dollars." The Delaware Gazette of Oct 28 adds detail from an Oct 25 dispatch: "Considerable damage has been done to property along the ocean front, the boardwalk south of the life-saving station [is in] such condition that it will have to be torn up. A cottage at the south end of the town, known as Mordecai Cottage and owned by George L. Harrison of Baltimore, [is a total] wreck. The building and furniture were valued [at] $2,000. Cropper's large pavilion [blown] down. The porch in front of Payne's Hotel is damaged. One end of the Atlantic Casino porch is carried [away]; Trimper's porch is torn away, and Hobbs' pavilion is slightly damaged. Schaeffer's bakery is damaged about $200. The pound of the Ocean City Fishing Co. is torn up. The north end of the town sustained little damage." The Wilmington Sun of Oct 26 reported the storm in the same terms but carried a wilder second-hand version out of Berlin — see conflicts. — 1897 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [reviewed]: Adds the two fullest accounts of the 25–26 October gale, neither of them in the record before. (1) A separate staff dispatch in the New York Journal and Advertiser of 27 October, datelined Ocean City, Md., Oct. 26, which is the only source that gives the walk's full extent: "It was severest on the southern point below Congress Hall, where the ocean and bay nearly meet. Below the hall are three cottages, Mr. Mordecai's, of Baltimore; William Taber's and Granville B. Stokes's. Mordecai's was torn to pieces … Going northward from here the board walk is completely torn away until the Atlantic Hotel is reached. The only damage to Congress Hall and the Atlantic Hotel was that their front porches were wrecked." The same dispatch names the wreck — "The schooner Ethel Dukes, owned by William Rayne, is wrecked near the bridge, her masts hanging over it" — and records that "the electric light poles and wires from the Atlantic Hotel southward are all torn away and washed out by the heavy seas", which is the earliest evidence this campaign holds of an electric distribution network in the streets of Ocean City. (2) The Baltimore American's dispatch of 25 October, reprinted in at least ten papers from Richmond to St. Paul, carries a damage inventory the Wilmington version omits: "The large porches of Congress Hall, Trimper's, the Eastern Shore Hotel, Cropper's pavilion, Atlantic Hotel and Meyer cottage are completely wrecked. The immense fish pound of the Ocean City Fishing Company was carried out to sea. The Cambridge Hotel was nearly wrecked. A large two-masted schooner was sunk in the bay after being driven against the draw bridge." A third witness, the Wilmington Evening Journal of 25 October, reports the first night: "The surf was running across the beach at Ocean City into Sinepuxent bay last night. No damage has been done excepting to railroad tracks and boardwalks." Plural, the night before the walk went.

   Eight years after the 1889 hurricane and four after the 1893 storms, the sea came over the island again — and this time the thing it broke was the board walk. Three papers name it, one of them calls it new, and one of them fixes it on the map: south from Trimper's, gone; north from Trimper's, broken.

   Sinepuxent Beach Company

   Source · checked 2026-08-06

3. 1900 · 1900-08-27

   An excursionist from Baltimore goes into the surf at Cropper's bath house and is found dead half a mile down the beach.

   John Kelly of Baltimore came down on the Iron Molders' Union excursion on the morning of Monday 27 August. About six that evening his body was found floating just below the surface, nearly in front of the life-saving station, by Harry Covington of Snow Hill, who brought it to the beach. "Life had evidently been extinct for several hours, but all sig[ns showed] that it was not an ordinary case of drowning, as but little water [was in] the body, and it is not usual for a corpse to rise to the surface for nearly 24 hours after drowning." He had gone into the water from Cropper's bath house, "nearly half a mile from where the remains were found" — a locating detail for the establishment that would burn on the boardwalk in April 1901. The Washington Times reported the same day that "from the appearance of the body it was evident that Kelly had been stricken with apoplexy or heart disease while in the water." Kelly was one of two people the surf nearly took that summer: on 18 July Mrs. Walter J. Elliott of Easton, down with the Brotherhood of St. Andrew excursion, "began strangling and wildly struggling" beyond her depth and was brought ashore by her husband and revived by a crowd of Easton people.

   Source · checked 2026-08-06