History

John T. Keas

superintendent, Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet Company · active 1908

Berlin man appointed superintendent of the Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet Company's works in April 1908, when the company began driving bulkheads from the bayside toward the beach. He was a Berlin storekeeper — the new Burbage, Rowell & Co. store that summer filled the block between his premises and the Calvin B. Taylor Banking Company — and a West Berlin delegate to the county Democratic convention.

In the record (2)

  1. 1908

    The Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet Company dykes the bay and dredges through the beach — a private inlet, built for oysters, twenty-five years before the storm.

    The whole of 1908 in the Democratic Messenger is the story of this company. February: "A meeting of the stockholders of the Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet Co. will be held at Dirickson's Hall in Berlin, Md., on February 12th, 1908 … The plans are prepared for your inspection. ORLANDO HARRISON, President." April: "WORK ON INLET COMMENCED — Under Guidance Of Competent Civil Engineers Who Are Sure of Success … At a meeting of the stockholders in Berlin last Monday the old directors were re-elected. Mr. O. D. Collins was elected in place of Lambert Ayres, deceased. Dodge & Day, civil engineers of Philadelphia, have been employed to plan the work and Mr. John T. Keas has been appointed superintendent. Work of constructing bulkheads from the bayside to the beach will start at once. $10,000.00 worth of stock has been subscribed for, about one-fourth of which has been paid in." June: "THE SALT WATER WILL SOON FLOW — Workmen Pushing Ahead On The Inlet — Piling All Driven … All of the piling has been driven across the Sinepuxent Bay for the dyke, and a large number of men are at work under the supervision of Capt. W. B. S. Powell, putting down the brush" — brush cut from the beach lands near Green Run Life-Saving Station and delivered by a fleet of monitors, with "hundreds of people … visiting the grounds where the work is being done." August: the piling all down, the cutting through the beach under way, a 12-inch sand blower contracted for at $1,200, and boat-loads of Snow Hill people taken down to see it on the day of the Democratic congressional convention. December: "CUTTING THE INLET NEAR OCEAN CITY, MD. The steam dredge which has been recently built by the Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet Company is cutting its way through the beach from bay to ocean with great rapidity," illustrated with a cut showing the dredge and "a portion of the dyke which has been constructed from the bayside to within a few feet of the beach, with the purpose of concentrating at the beach side all the force of the water banked up against this dyke." On 26 December the paper printed a letter from F. C. Warrener, assistant engineer of the War Department, who had "came to Ocean City on a special train to view the inlet," saying he was glad of the progress and had already given his opinion that it would succeed. The object was never navigation: "its first object was to promote the welfare of the oystermen and increase the oyster industry of Worcester County."

    Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet CompanyOrlando HarrisonWilliam B. S. Powell

    Source · checked 2026-08-06

  2. 1909 · 1909-07-24

    At 4.20 p.m. on Saturday 24 July 1909, Orlando Harrison cuts the last strip of sand with a shovel and the Atlantic runs into Sinepuxent Bay.

    "INLET CUT FROM BAY TO OCEAN. Water of the Atlantic Now Flowing in Sinepuxent Bay. Will be Success." The Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet Company finished the work it began in April 1908. "At the opening where the dam was cut, the water is at least four feet deep with a width of over sixty feet, and as it is gradually deepening and widening, there is every encouragement to believe that the enterprise will be a success. Hundreds of people were present at the opening, among the number being Mr. Orlando Harrison, president of the Salt Water Inlet Company; Oliver D. Collins, John T. Keys, Capt. W. B. S. Powell, Capt. George S. Scarborough, Robert J. Showell, William Whaley, C. L. Vincent, editor of the Messenger, and hundreds of others. Mr. Orlando Harrison cut the last strip of land with his shovel and let the water from the bay to the ocean amid the cheers of the people witnessing the event." At 11 o'clock Sunday morning Capt. W. B. S. Powell sailed a government boat out of the inlet to the ocean and back through it to Ocean City. The paper reported that the State of Maryland would likely be asked to help maintain it, and that Senator John Walter Smith and Congressman J. Harry Covington would be asked to seek a federal appropriation, "because it is conceived by everyone who visits it that if this inlet can be made permanent it will be the means of making Ocean City one of the greatest health resorts along the Atlantic coast." Two weeks earlier the Messenger's Berlin column had reported the government engineer's "official permission to dike the inlet, without which it could not be permanent," and by mid-August "the crabs in Sinepuxent Bay, since the opening of the Inlet, are the finest ever seen there, and the most abundant."

    Twenty-four years before the 1933 storm did it for nothing, a stock company of Berlin businessmen cut an inlet through this beach by hand and by dredge — and for one month it worked.

    Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet CompanyOrlando HarrisonWilliam B. S. Powell

    Source · checked 2026-08-06