Orlando Harrison
nurseryman, mayor of Berlin, president of the Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet Company · 1867–1928
Berlin nurseryman of J. G. Harrison & Sons and mayor of Berlin, and the man who drove the 1908 attempt to cut an inlet through the beach at Ocean City. As president of the Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet Company he called the stockholders to Dirickson's Hall in February 1908, hired Dodge & Day of Philadelphia as engineers, put John T. Keas in as superintendent, took boat-loads of Snow Hill men down to see the dyke in July, and was still soliciting subscriptions in December while the company's own steam dredge cut its way from bay to ocean. In the same year he was county chairman of the anti-liquor campaign that carried Worcester dry — the body that renamed itself the Citizens' League — and in August he sailed from New York for England, France, Germany and Holland to inspect apple, pear, plum and cherry seedlings for the family firm. He was born at Roxana, Delaware, in 1867, served in the Maryland House of Delegates, was several times mayor of Berlin, and was elected to the Maryland Senate in 1913 and held the seat until his death in March 1928 — which is the office the campaign's bay-bridge, jetty and inlet facts have been assuming for fifteen years of the record without ever dating. He was survived by his widow and four sons, and by two sisters, Mrs. Geo. W. Purnell and Mrs. William B. S. Powell of Ocean City. Former Governor John G. Townsend of Delaware was a pallbearer.
In the record (33)
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 CompanyJohn T. KeasWilliam B. S. Powell
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1908
Worcester County votes itself dry, and the fight to exempt Ocean City fails — beaten by the county's own senator, who owned property in the resort.
The General Assembly's local-option bill for Worcester County reached the Senate as a special order in February 1908. The Democratic Messenger of 15 February reported it under the head "LOCAL OPTION BILL PASSED — EFFORT TO EXEMPT OCEAN CITY A FAILURE." Senator Biddison suggested that "owing to the investments made at Ocean City by outsiders, their interests should be considered" and that they be given "a chance to get out." State Senator John P. Moore of Worcester refused: "he was himself largely interested in property there, and that he expected this to depreciate in value, but his party had promised to give the county a vote on the question as to whether it shall go dry, and he intended to live up to the pledge given." Senate President Seth asked whether the vote would be by district or countywide and was told "a majority on the dry side would wipe out liquor in the entire county." Opposition was withdrawn; a companion bill from Delegate Robley D. Jones passed the House the next day. A separate exemption bill was then introduced by a Baltimore member — "for the simple reason that they could not get one of the Representatives from this county to do it" — and was laid over into oblivion; the Messenger of 21 March crowed that "all the fuss about the Ocean City exemption bill has gone where the woodbine twineth," and that Governor Crothers would veto it in any case. The county voted in late March and went dry; from 4 April a Snow Hill shoe dealer was advertising "You Have Heard the Good News About the County going DRY … and we are happy now over the result, but in order to KEEP DRY WEAR MY 'BATTLE AXE' SHOES." The county's Anti-Saloon League, renamed the Citizens' League, ran the campaign under county chairman Orlando Harrison of Berlin — the same man then presiding over the Sinepuxent inlet company. Ocean City had been exempted from the county's local-option law in 1882; in 1908 it was not.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
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 CompanyJohn T. KeasWilliam B. S. Powell
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1909 · 1909-09-06
Six weeks later the inlet is a failure — the tide has washed sand into it until it is "completely closed up on the bay side."
"SINEPUXENT INLET IS CLOSED AGAIN. SALISBURY, Md., Sept. 6 — Sinepuxent Inlet, which was constructed some time ago to connect the ocean near Ocean City with the Sinepuxent Bay, is a failure, according to reports received from Ocean City. When the inlet was dug the promoters of the project figured out that the rise and fall of the tide would keep the channel open at all times and that the water flowing through would keep the inlet navigable. Instead of keeping the channel open the tide has persistently washed sand into it until the inlet has been completely closed up on the bay side of the channel. A proposition is now on foot to build a bulkhead out into the Sinepuxent Bay on both sides of the channel and by this means it is hoped to keep the sand from blocking up the waterway to the ocean." The *Democratic Messenger*, which had covered the cutting for eighteen months and put the dredge on its front page, printed nothing about the closing on any 1909 page that mentions Ocean City. The obituary of the scheme came from a Wilmington daily.
The lesson the 1933 inlet had to be taught by a hurricane and then by the Army Corps: on this coast a cut stays open only if something holds it open.
Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet Company
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1912 · 1912-04-08
The sand won: the Sinepuxent inlet has closed itself in, and the legislature gives the company until 1918 to try again.
The question left open by 1908 — whether the Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet Company's steam dredge ever opened a lasting cut — is answered in the Democratic Messenger of 30 March 1912, under the head "Sinepuxent Inlet": "Mr. Taylor of this county introduced a bill in the House to extend until 1918 the life of the act incorporating the Sinepuxent Saltwater Inlet Company. This company was chartered about eight years ago to dig an inlet across Sinepuxent Beach, about a mile below Ocean City, to admit the salt water of the Atlantic Ocean into the Sinepuxent Bay, the purpose being to make the upper waters of the bay available for oyster planting. The State spent $2,500 to aid the project, which has thus far failed because of the closing in of the sand, thus wiping out the canal. It is proposed to renew the project." The bill became Chapter 518 of the Acts of 1912, approved 8 April, which repealed and re-enacted sections 7, 8 and 14 of Chapter 338 of 1906 — the company's charter, previously untraced. It re-authorised the company "to cut, dig and make canals or inlets of any width or depth it may deem necessary or proper, at such places on the eastern border of Worcester county, located north or south of Ocean City," recited that the bays "have been unhealthy fresh waters for many years past and unfit for the natural growth and cultivation of oysters... by reason of the closing of inlets formerly existing," granted the company exclusive shellfish rights over a described block of bay bottom, and set a new deadline: "the above mentioned canal shall be completed on or before the first day of May, 1918."
Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet Company
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1913
The pier issues season tickets, plants evergreens from a Berlin nursery on its deck, and advertises itself as "clean and respectable at all times."
The Messenger of 5 July 1913: "We acknowledge, with thanks, the receipt of a season ticket to the Ocean City Pier from Hon. Orlando Harrison, President of the Association. One of the places for comfort and amusement at Ocean City is the Pier — it is decorated with evergreen trees from Harrison's Nurseries at Berlin. Hook and line fishing from the pier is excellent. The pier is kept clean and respectable at all times and is under good management." Orlando Harrison — Berlin nurseryman and mayor, and the man who drove the failed 1908 attempt to cut an inlet through the beach — is here running the pier company, and dressing its deck with his own stock. "Clean and respectable" is doing the same work as Mayor Powell's speakeasy raids the same week: in a dry county the resort was selling its own decency.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Pier Ballroom & Bandshell SiteOcean City Pier and Improvement Company
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1916
Senator Orlando Harrison secures a $200,000 appropriation for a concrete bridge at Ocean City — arguing that seven or eight hundred automobiles a day already reach the town in summer.
The Baltimore *News*, reprinted in the *Democratic Messenger* of 1 April 1916: Harrison secured $200,000 for a concrete bridge at Ocean City, "being the estimated cost of such a bridge as furnished by State Roads Engineer Shirley." At a conference of senators in the Governor's office he argued "conclusively that it was not a Worcester County matter" but that the bridge was badly needed as part of the State Roads system, "the present railroad bridge being insufficient to accommodate travel, and always dangerous because of the [heavy] train service over it. From every section of Maryland hundreds of automobiles come to Ocean City, as many as seven or eight hundred a day, most any Sunday during the Summer. They come from Easton, Cambridge, Salisbury and other towns in great numbers, and it is for this traffic that the bridge is to be built." In his own August letter Harrison set out the history: he had first offered a bill for $75,000, was told to abandon it for two years because of the state of the treasury, reintroduced it in the winter of 1916, got Chief Engineer Shirley to sound the bay at Ocean City, and found the true cost would run from $75,000 to $200,000 depending on what the federal navigation engineers demanded. The money came from an $850,000 bond bill he introduced covering roads and bridges, the Maryland Agricultural College building and three armories.
Maryland State Roads CommissionHenry G. Shirley
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1916
Harrison publishes an open letter for the bridge rally: 473 citizens of Worcester County had petitioned for the road and the bridge, and every month of delay was costing the county money.
Printed under the U.S. Engineer's hearing notice in the *Democratic Messenger* of 12 August 1916 and signed ORLANDO HARRISON: "During the past session of the Legislature I received petitions asking for this road to be built and a bridge to be built from four hundred and seventy-three people, citizens of Worcester County. The petitions sent me were from Showells, Ocean City, Whaleyville, Ironshire, Newark and Berlin." He argues the state, not the county, should pay: "Worcester had furnished a bridge across this bay for the past thirty years and ... this time the State should bear the burden of the expense and give us an improved bridge, that would be safe and durable." He asks "that every citizen of the Eastern Shore be present if it is possible" at the Atlantic Hotel meeting, closing: "For the sake of safety to our people I ask you to attend this meeting on August 16."
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1916
The State Roads Commission picks the bridge site at the end of May 1916: about three hundred yards north of the railroad bridge, landing at the foot of Worcester Street.
The Cambridge *Daily Banner* of 2 June 1916, "SITE SELECTED FOR OCEAN CITY BRIDGE": F. H. Zouck, chairman of the State Roads Commission, H. G. Shirley, its chief engineer, and Col. John Biddle of the War Department went to Ocean City to choose the site. "It is pretty well understood that the bridge will be constructed about three hundred yards North of the railroad bridge, and will enter Ocean City at the foot of Worcester Street, which is one square South of the new railroad station at Ocean City. Some of the people wanted the bridge to cross the bay further up, but the cost of building across such a wide reach would be so much [greater]." The county delegation that went down to argue the placing: Wm. D. Corddry, J. Edward White, Harris Corddry and M. T. Hargis of Snow Hill; Senator Harrison of Berlin; Walter B. Miller of Salisbury. The approach from the bayside was to be tied into the existing macadam.
Maryland State Roads CommissionF. H. ZouckHenry G. Shirley
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1916
The whole Worcester County board of commissioners goes to Annapolis in February 1916 to plead the Ocean City bridge before the Senate Finance Committee.
The *Democratic Messenger* of 4 March 1916, under the head "Working For The Ocean City Bridge": the county commissioners went before the Finance Committee of the State Senate in the committee room of Senator Harrison, with their counsel J. Edward White, Esq. Named as present: E. W. McMaster, W. D. Corddry, N. J. Winbrow, E. Layton, Marion T. Hargis, Edward S. Furbush and William H. Purnell. Harrison — chairman of the Senate Committee on Roads and Highways — had introduced his bridge bill in the first week of the session. The paper's verdict: "While this has not yet become a law, and no specific appropriation may get through, yet it is conceded that it will be [made easier] that the State Roads Commission will build the Ocean City Bridge."
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Maryland State Roads Commission
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1916 · 1916-04-18
Chapter 665 of 1916 authorizes and requests the State Roads Commission to build an iron, steel or concrete bridge across Sinepuxent Bay at Ocean City.
Approved 18 April 1916 by Governor Emerson C. Harrington. The act recites that a system of good roads has already been completed connecting Ocean City with the rest of the Eastern Shore and Baltimore City, that it is "eminently desirable in view of the growing size, importance and popularity of Ocean City as the only watering place on the Atlantic Coast in Maryland that the means of access thereto be made easy, safe and convenient," and directs the Commission to build and thereafter maintain the bridge "as a part of the State Roads system" and "as soon after the passage of this Act as practicable," connecting Ocean City with the state roads laid out for Worcester County. The act carries no appropriation figure of its own — the money came out of a separate roads-and-bridges bond bill.
This is the paper the whole 'Ocean City bridge of 1916' rests on. It is an authorization, not an opening: the statute asks for a bridge, it does not deliver one.
Maryland State Roads Commission
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1916 · 1916-12-30
The bridge is bid, re-awarded and still unbuilt when 1916 ends: on 30 December the chairman of the State Roads Commission writes Harrison that work will start "next week."
The State Roads Commission advertised the job in October: "CONTRACT No. WO-[1]. WORCESTER COUNTY. Sealed proposals for the following: Fill across Sinepuxent Bay between end of State Road and Ocean City, approximately [—] cubic yards, will be received by the State Roads Commission at its offices, 601 Garrett Building, Baltimore, Maryland, until 12 M., on the 14th day of November, 1916." Ordered by the Commission on 4 October 1916; F. H. Zouck, Chairman, Lyon H. Wilson, Secretary. Ocean City had also been advertised for on the land side: in October a State Roads condemnation jury was summoned to meet on Mrs. Sarah Kenton Taber's land on 23 October 1916 for the road "leading from Berlin, in Worcester County, Maryland, to the Sinepuxent Bay and Ocean City," on plans approved by H. D. [H. G.] Shirley, Chief Engineer. Then, in the *Messenger*'s last issue of the year, under "Getting Ready to Build New Ocean City Bridge — Work Will Start At Once," Zouck's letter of 30 December 1916 to Senator Harrison at Berlin: "I have your letter of the 3rd inst., in which [you say] that the people of Ocean City are very much disappointed that the work has not been awarded for the approaches to the bridge. In replying thereto, I beg to advise you that the low bidder, Mr. Rich, could not furnish bond, and as his time limit expired last week, we, therefore, have awarded it to the next lowest bidder, F. B. Beasman Co. They expect to start work next week, and have agreed to do it within the original time limit."
This is the correction 1916 owes the registry. The bay bridge is dated 1916 because that is the year it was authorized, funded, sited, federally approved and put out to bid — but on 31 December 1916 not a yard of it had been built. The automobile era at Ocean City starts on paper in 1916 and in concrete in 1917.
Maryland State Roads CommissionF. H. ZouckHenry G. Shirley
Source · checked 2026-08-06
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.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1917 · 1917-08-27
T. Coleman du Pont offers to build the four missing miles between his Delaware boulevard and the Maryland road to Ocean City.
The Cambridge Daily Banner of 28 August 1917: "ZOUCK APPRECIATES GEN. DuPONT'S OFFER: Four Miles of Good Road Will Connect Delaware With Ocean City. Chairman Zouck, of the State Roads Commission, yesterday expressed his approval of the generous offer of Gen. Coleman duPont, the Delaware multi-millionaire, to construct and to deed to the Maryland commission a smooth and hard road from the Delaware line at Selbyville to Showell, Worcester county, a distance of over four miles" — a gift the paper valued at about $40,000. "Selbyville marks the southern terminus of the Coleman duPont boulevard, extending from Georgetown, Del. Showell is the northern terminus of the Maryland system of good roads, beginning at Pocomoke City and crossing the Ocean City boulevard at Berlin. The link proposed to be constructed by General duPont is, therefore, the only incomplete section of a system of good roads extending from Pocomoke City to Georgetown, with connections at Berlin for Ocean City." The terms were handed to State Senator Orlando Harrison of Worcester and transmitted by him to the commission; du Pont asked for a strip of land 200 feet wide, obtained within 90 days. The same month the Banner reported du Pont personally at Ocean City, spending several days "with an eye keen to the future possibility of the development of this resort." Securing the right-of-way became point 3 of Harrison's September platform.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
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.
Ocean City Bridge CompanyMaryland State Roads Commission
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1918 · 1918-03-09
The State Roads Commission's plan for carrying the state highways through Maryland's incorporated towns allots Ocean City $6,000.
In March 1918 the Commission endorsed the Municipal Congress of Maryland's plan for improving the state highways through incorporated towns and asked the legislature for $675,000. The schedule printed in the Messenger of 9 March 1918 gave, among many: Worcester Co. -- Snow Hill $25,000, Ocean City $6,000, Pocomoke City $15,000; against Salisbury $25,000, Cambridge $25,000, Easton $25,000, Crisfield $30,000, Cumberland $35,000. Senator Orlando Harrison had written to every mayor in the county: "I hope you will be present and have every member of your City Council with you, and every good road man in your section," for the joint hearing of the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committees at Annapolis on Wednesday 6 March. Ocean City's $6,000 is the smallest allotment of any incorporated Worcester town -- the same relative position it held in the 1917 Liberty Loan -- and it is the paving that would meet the bridge.
Maryland State Roads CommissionF. H. ZouckHenry G. Shirley
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1918 · 1918-08-26
Governor Emerson C. Harrington and the Maryland Press Association take over Ocean City for the association's midsummer meeting.
The Cambridge Daily Banner of 30 August 1918: "MARYLAND EDITORS IN SESSION THIS WEEK. Pleasant Visit to The Great Peach And Apple Orchards of Senator Harrison -- Delightful Cruise on Mr. Riddle's Palatial Yacht. The mid-summer meeting of the Maryland Press Association was held at Ocean City this week and was one of the most pleasant in the history of the Association. About 25 of the county papers were represented." Senator Orlando Harrison hosted the editors on the Monday: "Leaving Ocean City early Monday morning in automobiles, the visitors [were] shown through the extensive peach and apple orchards of Senator Harrison on his farm north of Berlin, up to the Delaware line. Returning to Berlin about noon, the editors were joined by Governor Emerson C. Harrington, who received a most cordial welcome from Senator Harrison and the editors. The entire party were guests of Senator Harrison at a splendid dinner served by Mine Host Harmondson, of the Atlantic Hotel." Then Snow Hill and Pocomoke City by car, "and the return trip to Ocean City was made about 6.30 o'clock and at 8 o'clock the association's banquet was served at the Atlantic Hotel. Addresses were made by Gov. Harrington, Senator Harrison, Mr. A. W. Brown of Delaware, and by several of the editors." A sitting governor of Maryland dining at the Atlantic Hotel in the last August of the war, three weeks after the town changed mayors and three weeks before the influenza arrived.
Atlantic HotelAtlantic Hotel BerlinMaryland Press AssociationEmerson C. Harrington
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1919
Senator Orlando Harrison drives the first automobile over the new bay bridge, with the mayor of Ocean City aboard.
The Messenger of 10 May 1919: "Senator Orlando Harrison, Engineer P. E. Burroughs, County Commissioner Boston, Superintendent of Road Construction G. C. Day, and Edward M. Scott, Mayor of Ocean City, were the first to go over the State Bridge in an automobile." The Annapolis Evening Capital of 7 May and the Cambridge Daily Banner of 6 May both date the run to "last Wednesday" — 30 April 1919 — a few days before the bridge was thrown open to the public. Harrison had made the appeal in the 1916 session that got the appropriation, and the paper noted it was "the Senator's especial desire to have present the men who helped to obtain this needed public improvement."
Maryland State Roads Commission
Source · checked 2026-08-06
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 CommissionOcean City Bridge Company
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1919 · 1919-07-04
Ten thousand people and 1,185 automobiles come to Ocean City for the formal opening of the bay bridge on the Fourth of July.
The Mayor and Council of Ocean City invited "all of the citizens of Maryland, Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Virginia" to the dedication. The Baltimore Sun's staff correspondent, reprinted in the Messenger of 12 July: "Dual celebration of the national holiday and of the formal opening of the new State highway bridge across Sinepuxent Bay caused the only seaside resort of Maryland to suddenly bound today from lethargy into as great summer activity as it has ever known. Governor Harrington and about 10,000 other residents of the State cooperated to make the day memorable in the city's history. By actual count, 1,185 automobiles had come into this city at 3 P. M., over the bridge, and 8,000 visitors, about 360 of whom were from Baltimore, by train." The Governor motored over from Cambridge with his family; the Pocomoke City Band announced his two-o'clock arrival with "Maryland, My Maryland" and then led the procession out to the drawkeeper's house, midway of the bridge, where the ceremonies took place. Small evergreen trees had been planted at intervals along the entire length of the bridge; they and a few flags on the drawkeeper's house "were the only decorations." John W. Ennis of Pocomoke called for order. Chief engineer Mackall said the bridge "was the last link in the chain of good roads from Ocean City to Western Maryland."
1,185 cars counted by three in the afternoon, against 8,000 people off the trains. The road had not beaten the railroad yet — but for the first time in Ocean City's history somebody thought the cars were worth counting.
Maryland State Roads CommissionJohn Walter SmithPhillips Lee GoldsboroughF. H. Zouck
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1920 · 1920-02-16
Senator Orlando Harrison led a move to make Governor Ritchie put $50,000 into a supplemental budget for storm repairs at Ocean City.
The Wilmington Every Evening, 16 February 1920: "During this week Senator Orlando Harrison, of Worcester county, Md., will lead a movement in the Maryland legislature to have Governor Ritchie submit a supplemental budget carrying $50,000 for the repairs of damages to public property at Ocean City, Md., by the [storm]. Supporting him will be senators and delegates from nearby counties and by committees from Ocean City, Berlin, Snow Hill, Salisbury and other Eastern Shore towns, which have visited the scenes of devastation. As a precedent for their claim for relief they will point to the action of the legislature about 15 years ago in reimbursing the late Michael Jenkins for funds advanced by him for the relief of the residents of Millington, Kent county, whose places of business and dwellings were swept away by fire." Harrison is the same senator whose 1916 appeal got the bay bridge its appropriation. The session was five weeks old and had seven weeks to run; what it produced was Chapter 382.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1920 · 1920-08-15
Frank A. Furst came to Ocean City with U.S. Senator John Walter Smith to inspect the new inlet, and fell down the Atlantic Hotel's porch steps instead.
"Frank A. Furst, who, with United States Senator John Walter Smith, motored to Ocean City, Md., Saturday to inspect a natural inlet in Sinepuxent Bay below Ocean City, fell from the [ninth] step of the porch of the Atlantic Hotel, at the resort, yesterday morning, sustaining a bad bruise over the left eye and a severe shaking up. … After first aid treatment by Dr. F. J. Townsend, of Ocean City, Mr. Furst, accompanied by Dr. Townsend, Senator Smith and others, was taken in Mr. Furst's limousine to Berlin, Md., about 7 miles from Ocean City, where arrangements had been made by telephone with Horace F. Harmonson, proprietor, to receive him at the Atlantic Hotel." Dr. J. McFadden Dick of Salisbury was hunted across two counties by telephone, found bathing, and driven to Berlin in the Internal Revenue Collector's car. "Mr. Furst and Senator Smith, with State Senator Orlando Harrison and Ocean City residents, were to start at about 9.30 o'clock for a boat ride to inspect the natural inlet which last winter's storm opened in the Sinepuxent, when Mr. Furst fell. … Saturday night's rain had made the hotel steps slippery." Furst kept joking: Senator Smith had called him "Exhibit A" in his Senatorial campaign the day before, and Furst told him "Senator, your Exhibit A has been out." He was back in Baltimore by Monday evening, having driven home by way of Elkton "because the road was good all the way." Read past the slapstick: a sitting United States Senator, the state senator for Worcester, and one of Baltimore's largest contractors all went to Ocean City in August 1920 to look at a hole the sea had made in February.
Atlantic HotelAtlantic Hotel BerlinJohn Walter SmithFrancis J. Townsend
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1921
Senator Orlando Harrison campaigns on having secured $100,000 "to protect the Ocean Front from destroying Maryland's only seashore resort."
A full-page advertisement for State Senator Orlando Harrison of Berlin in the Worcester Democrat of 5 November 1921 lists his accomplishments and ends: "Orlando Harrison secured for Ocean City, $100,000.00 (one hundred thousand dollars) to protect the Ocean Front from destroying Maryland's only seashore resort." The same advertisement credits him with the Ocean City bridge - "The bridge at Ocean City erected through Orlando Harrison's efforts saves Worcester County Tax payers, $1,200.00 a year, and is a great protection to travelers" - and records that in 1917 he promised to see the bridge completed at the earliest possible date and did. The Messenger's own election advertising adds a separate service to the bay: when the Conservation Commission's bill would have placed Sinepuxent Bay under the same restrictions as the Chesapeake oyster industry, Harrison "promptly came to me and got me to hold it in Committee and there the bill died," wrote a fellow senator from Centreville on 25 October 1921. Harrison was returned to the State Senate that November.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Source · checked 2026-08-10
1922
Senator Orlando Harrison tells the county paper what the 1920 storm did: the front board walk swept away in sections, cottages demolished, and high tides now reaching two hundred feet nearer the ocean-front property than in years past.
Writing to the Democratic Messenger in February 1922 to press the case for state beach protection, Harrison set out the record: "The storm of 1920 swept away large sections of the front board walk, completely demolished some of the cottages and boarding houses, and seriously damaged a great many others, but the citizens of Ocean City with their usual energy and pride in their home town went to work at once and built new cottages, repaired the damaged ones, repaired the board walks at their own expense, and Ocean City is now in better condition from the standpoint of hotel and cottage accommodation than it was before the storm." And then the measurement: "Citizens who have been familiar with the ocean front for thirty years state that the storms have swept away much of the original beach and that the high tides now reach 200 feet nearer the ocean front property than in years past, and that the danger of damage by storm increases each season." He noted that the General Assembly of 1920, at his instigation, had made an appropriation in the Bridge Bond Acts of 1920 for the State Roads Commission to work on the beach front — but that the money would not be available until 1 August 1923. — 1922 RECTIFICATION, 2026-08-10: The text ran on the same day in the Worcester Democrat (Pocomoke City) and the Peninsula Enterprise (Accomac, Va.), and on 17 February in the Milford Chronicle (Del.), as well as in the Democratic Messenger. The Democrat's text reads "Citizens who have been familiar with the Ocean front for **35 years**" where the existing fact has "thirty years." Record as a DataConflict (thirty vs thirty-five years) and cross-reference fact:1922-harrison-runs-a-peninsula-wide-press-campaign. The Democrat's version also names the inland waterway's northern end as "the Isle of Wight Bay on the Delaware coast" rather than Rehoboth.
The town rebuilt its own boardwalk out of pocket after 1920 and then spent 1922 asking Annapolis to stop the ocean.
Ocean City BoardwalkMaryland State Roads Commission
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1922
In March 1922 the State Roads Commission drives the first experimental jetty into the surf at Ocean City — four hundred feet of double piling opposite Somerset Avenue, sixteen men, three weeks.
The Democratic Messenger of 1 April 1922: "Under the supervision of District Engineer P. E. Burroughs, of Salisbury, construction was started on Wednesday of last week by the forces of the State Roads Commission on the new experimental jetty at Ocean City. The site is opposite Somerset avenue, between the Washington Pharmacy and the Ocean City Pier — starting at the building line and running well out into the surf for a distance of approximately 400 feet. The construction consists of the driving of two rows of piling about six feet apart, which are tied together by lateral braces and steel tie cords. The construction is such that the waters may pass through the jetty on ordinary tides or wash over it on high tides without inflicting damage, meanwhile putting a stop to the encroachment of the waves upon the beach surface." It was estimated at about three weeks' work with about sixteen men. "Officials state that the jetty will in no manner interfere with the splendid surf bathing at Ocean City during the seasons." By 20 May the town's own correspondent reported it "being rounded off, and finished up this week. Capt. Lloyd has done good work, and people say, who should know, that already its good results begin to show. The consensus of opinion is, that the next one should be placed above the end of the boardwalk, as the force of all of our storms come from the North-east; also that the jetty should be built before the September storms." — 1922 RECTIFICATION, 2026-08-10: The Worcester Democrat of 1 April 1922 carries the same State Roads Commission story as the Democratic Messenger under the headline "WORK ON NEW JETTY BEGUN AT OCEAN CITY", and says "The State Roads Commission has about **15** men working on the project" — the existing fact says sixteen. It also carries the sentence the existing record lacks: "One jetty only will be constructed at this time as it is only a matter of experiment. If this one proves satisfactory it is said by officials that the jetties will be a very cheap method of protecting the entire frontage of Maryland's only seaside resort." By 16 December the town's own column reports jetties in the plural nearly complete, and by 30 December "practically completed" and holding sand enough "to form a new beach." Add fact:1922-more-than-one-jetty-goes-in and fact:1922-the-jetties-make-a-new-beach to relatedFactRefs.
Ocean City's first piece of hard shore protection, and the town was already arguing about where the second one should go.
Ocean City BoardwalkMaryland State Roads CommissionP. E. Burroughs
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1922
Army engineers report to Congress in 1922 on an inland waterway from Rehoboth Bay to Chincoteague Bay — $171,000 for a channel six feet deep — which would put Ocean City directly on the intracoastal route.
The Democratic Messenger of 4 February 1922 carried the report of the Board of Engineers for Rivers and Harbors, forwarded by Gen. Lansing H. Beach, chief of engineers, on a survey ordered in the River and Harbor act of 1919 over 85 miles of coast. To establish a channel six feet deep and 40 to 50 feet wide would cost $171,000 with $4,000 a year maintenance, plus $75,400 of additional jetties at the entrance to Delaware Bay. The paper set out the history: a more elaborate project had been attempted in 1886, when Congress directed a channel six feet deep and 70 feet wide from Chincoteague Bay to Delaware Bay, abandoned when about a third complete; in 1912 a modified project built a six-foot channel between the Lewes and Broadkill rivers and Rehoboth Bay. Senator Harrison put the town's stake plainly the following week: "The Government is coming to realize the importance of an Inland Water Way extending from the Isle of Wight Bay on the Delaware coast to the Chincoteague Bay on the Virginia coast, putting Ocean City in a direct line on this route." — 1922 RECTIFICATION, 2026-08-10: The Worcester Democrat's printing of Harrison's statement reads: "The Government is coming to recognize the importance of an Inland Water Way extending from the **Isle of Wight Bay on the Delaware coast** to the Chincoteague Bay on the Virginia coast, putting Ocean City in a direct line on this route." The existing fact has the waterway running from Rehoboth Bay. Both readings come from the same statement as printed in different papers; record the variant rather than choosing silently. (Isle of Wight Bay is in fact Maryland, immediately behind Ocean City, so the Democrat's version is internally confused, which is itself worth noting.)
Sources disagree on this.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1922
Ocean City has a natural inlet in 1922 — cut by the great storm of 1920 about two miles south of town, and by now salting the bay so well that the oyster men call it permanent.
Eleven years before the hurricane of 1933 made the inlet the town is famous for, a storm had already opened one. Senator Harrison, in his February 1922 letter to the Democratic Messenger: "The Inlet that was cut by the great storm of 1920 about two miles south of Ocean City is considered by the citizens as a permanent connection between the ocean and the bay. The increased saltiness of the bay water, due to this inlet, has made conditions almost ideal for immediate enlargement of the oyster and clam industry." The same paper in January had reported the commercial consequence directly: "Since the cutting of the inlet below Ocean City by a storm a couple of years ago the bay has become the regular landing place for many of the sturgeon fishermen. The oyster industry has grown so rapidly that it is said that Ocean City is fast becoming one of the important oyster towns of this section." By May the Messenger was listing among the town's assets "her extensive pound fisheries" and "important and constantly increasing activity in the oyster and clam industry in Sinepuxent Bay, due to the salting of the waters of the bay through the natural inlet." — 1922 RECTIFICATION, 2026-08-10: The Ledger-Enterprise of 28 January 1922, describing the storm seas finding "an outlet in the inlet that was formed **three years ago**" — i.e. 1919, not 1920. Harrison's own February statement says the great storm of 1920, and the Vail medal citation independently fixes the storm to 4 February 1920. Record as a DataConflict with 1920 as the resolved value rather than dropping the disagreement; see the conflict block on fact:1922-the-seawall-holds-and-the-cable-goes.
The registry's inlet saga has run on the assumption that the sea refused to cooperate until 1933. In 1922 it had already obliged, two miles down the beach, and the state was paying to keep the hole open.
an inlet cut by the February 1920 storm a few miles south of the town — sources give two miles and four miles
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1922
The blizzard of 27-29 January 1922 — the worst storm on the peninsula in twenty-three years — drives the sea across Ocean City, and the ocean and the bay meet.
"The worst storm that has visited this section since 1899 started in Friday night and continued all day Saturday, Saturday night and part of Sunday," the Democratic Messenger reported under the headline WHOLE PENINSULA STRUCK BY BLIZZARD. Drifts closed the rural mail routes; the mail carrier between Snow Hill and Pocomoke City abandoned his automobile and walked back to town; the state road north and south was impassable until Monday. "At Ocean City the storm was very severe on Saturday. The ocean and bay met in several places." A fortnight later Senator Orlando Harrison put it to the same paper in his own words: "Again on January 27th and 28th, 1922 another very severe storm prevailed. Grave fears were again entertained for the safety of Ocean City, the beach front and the property adjacent thereof. Had it not been for the sudden change in the wind which was sweeping the tide over the town there would have no doubt been damage done equal to or greater than the storm of 1920." This is the same system that buried Washington and collapsed the roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre on the night of 28 January.
Eleven years before the storm that made the inlet, the ocean crossed the island and the town got away with it on a wind shift.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1924
Senator Harrison's joint resolution asks the Governor's supplemental budget for jetties and 'protection of the inlet at Ocean City.'
Reported from Annapolis in March: 'A joint resolution by Mr. Harrison calls for the inclusion in the supplemental budget of the Governor of an appropriation of $60,000 for the construction of jetties and protection of the inlet at Ocean City.' Two Maryland weeklies printed the same wire paragraph on the same Friday with different figures — $60,000 in one, $56,000 in the other. A fortnight later Harrison changed tack and 'introduced a bill to appropriate $25,000 for each of the years 1925 and 1926 to construct jetties at Ocean City. The proposed addition to the tax rate for each of the two years is one-seventh of a cent.' That two-year form is what passed as Chapter 347 and what Ritchie vetoed. Earlier still, on 8 March, the Worcester Democrat had listed the Eastern Shore senators' shopping list — 'Senator Lankford wants a road to Deal's Island, Senator Copper, a bridge over the Chester river; Senator Harrison, jetties at Ocean City.'
$56,000 or $60,000 — two papers printed the same Annapolis paragraph the same day with different figures
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1924
Maryland votes $50,000 for jetties at Ocean City and to keep the 1920 inlet open — and the Governor vetoes it.
Chapter 347 of the Acts of 1924 is 'AN ACT to appropriate a sum of money for repairing and building the jetties in front of Ocean City in Worcester County and for building jetties in front of the inlet south of Ocean City in order to keep the same open.' Against its printed title in the session laws stands one word: '(Vetoed.)' The volume's index of vetoed acts lists it as 'Jetties at Ocean City ...... 347 931'. The Worcester Democrat gives the figure and the politics: the bill was a $50,000 loan sponsored by Senator Orlando Harrison, and 'has been stated by the Baltimore press as part of his share in the bloc formed to defeat the Governor's efforts to keep the tax rate down.' Governor Albert C. Ritchie disapproved more than sixty bills that April, among them Harrison's Snow Hill-to-Public-Landing road as well. This is the clearest statement the registry has that the inlet cut by the storm of February 1920 was still open in 1924 and that the State of Maryland now wanted it kept that way — and would not pay for it.
Four years after a storm did for free what the state had spent fifty years failing to do, Annapolis finally voted money to hold the opening — and the Governor struck it out to protect the tax rate.
Ocean City Inlet & JettyMaryland State Roads Commission
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1927
The Commandant of the Coast Guard brings a national convention to Ocean City, and closes it with a banquet in the rebuilt Atlantic Hotel.
On the evening of Wednesday 24 August 1927 the second annual convention of the Atlantic Coast Guard closed with a banquet in the dining room of the Atlantic Hotel at Ocean City, Md., attended by 100 members of the Coast Guard and their families, with officers from stations "from Maine to Key West, Fla." Rear Admiral F. C. Billard, Commandant of the Coast Guard, and Mrs. Billard travelled from Washington as guests of honour. "The dining room of the Atlantic Hotel was gay with gladioli, dahlias and shasta daisies, and the official flag of the Bear, the famous cutter, floated over the speaker's table with the Stars and Stripes." Capt. William I. Purnell, in charge of the Ocean City station, was master of ceremonies; Mrs. Purnell was hostess to the forty or more ladies who had come with the officers. Speakers included Representative Robert G. Houston of Delaware, O. M. Maxam (chief of the division of operations at Coast Guard headquarters), State Senator Louis Drexler of Delaware, Comdr. Louis Oliver Osborn of the Sixth Coast Guard District, S. R. Sands of Portsmouth, N.H., Edward Rasmussen of Asbury Park, N.J., and T. E. Tunnell of Delaware. State Senator Harrison of Maryland represented Governor Ritchie; District Commander John W. Richardson of Baltimore and Mayor William McCabe of Ocean City made the addresses of welcome.
Twenty months after the town's fire department was called practically useless and its hydrants froze, Ocean City was hosting the Commandant of the United States Coast Guard, and the room it happened in had been ashes. Two rebuildings in one sentence.
Atlantic HotelUnited States Coast GuardRear Admiral Frederick C. BillardCapt. William I. PurnellWilliam W. McCabe
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1927
Maryland commits $140,000 to dredge and scour the storm inlet south of Ocean City — five years before the storm that made the real one.
In December 1927 the Maryland State Roads Commission awarded a $100,000 contract to a Baltimore company for dredging in Sinepuxent Bay, and held a hearing on a $40,000 improvement to the Ocean City highway bridge over the bay: "the State Roads Commission of Maryland is at present involved in an expenditure of $140,000 toward the protection and improvement of the natural inlet and the Ocean City resort." The dredging was "a channel 150 feet wide and 4,000 feet long in the Sinepuxent Bay, extending northward from the natural inlet, three miles south of Ocean City." Its purpose was hydraulic: "to direct water on the ebbing tide through the channel of the natural inlet, in an effort to cleanse the inlet of sand deposits which are slowly filling up the inlet channel. At present, without a channel down the bay, the force of the falling tide is not sufficient to cleanse the inlet of deposits. The water passes on down the bay 45 miles where it connects with the sea at Chincoteague Island, Va." The bridge work was the same idea from the other end: Chairman Mackall planned to remove 152 feet of solid fill at each end of the approaches to the existing concrete open bridge and refill under the bridge with dredged material, "not only to safeguard the bridge from severe currents which flow under it, but to allow a greater flow of water to enter Upper Sinepuxent Bay and the Isle of Wight Bay so that this water may be available on ebb tide to scour the natural inlet three miles south of Ocean City of sediment brought in by the flood tide." The money was to come "out of the state appropriation of $150,000, given by the Legislature in 1926 for the protection of the inlet and Ocean City, Md." State Senator Orlando Harrison of Worcester County and Chairman John N. Mackall of the State Roads Commission are named as responsible.
Three years after Governor Ritchie vetoed $50,000 for jetties to keep the inlet open, the state was spending $140,000 to do exactly that — and the engineering logic is the same one that would be applied to the 1933 inlet: build a channel so the ebb tide scours what the flood tide silts up. Ocean City did not learn to keep an inlet open in 1934. It had been paying for the lesson since 1920.
Ocean City Inlet & JettyMaryland State Roads CommissionJohn N. Mackall
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1928 · 1928-03-27
Orlando Harrison of Berlin dies in March 1928 — the nurseryman who cut an inlet at Ocean City in 1908 and got the bay bridge built in 1916.
Milford Chronicle, 30 March 1928, and Smyrna Times, 28 March: "Besides his widow he leaves four sons: G. Hale Harrison, Orlando Harrison, Jr., Henry L. Harrison, and John L. Harrison. He is also survived by two sisters, Mrs. Geo. W. Purnell of Berlin, and Mrs. William B. S. Powell of Ocean City, Md. Funeral services [were held] Tuesday afternoon at Stevenson M. E. Church at Berlin. Former Governor John G. Townsend of Delaware, a life-long friend, was one of the pallbearers." Harrison was born at Roxana, Delaware in 1867; he sat in the Maryland House of Delegates, served several terms as mayor of Berlin, and was elected to the Maryland Senate in 1913, holding the seat until his death. His Harrison Brothers Nurseries at Berlin was the largest grower of fruit trees in the world.
This registry already holds him twice over: as president of the Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet Company, whose steam dredge cut from bay to ocean in 1908, and as the senator who wrote to the State Roads Commission about the Ocean City bay bridge in 1916 and asked for the soundings that fixed its price. He is a Berlin man, not an Ocean City one — and one of his sisters had married into Ocean City, to the Powells who owned the Atlantic Hotel before Dr. Purnell bought it in 1922. Twenty-five years after Harrison tried to cut an inlet, the sea cut one two miles from where he put his dyke.
Sinepuxent Salt Water Inlet Company
Source · checked 2026-08-06