W. Thomas Elliott
Mayor of Ocean City · active 1934–1935–
Mayor of Ocean City from the uncontested election of 1934, which ended twelve years of W. W. McCabe, and through the whole of 1935. He signs every formal document of the town's 1935 sewerage financing — the notice calling the special bond election, the appointment of the three judges of election, the resolution accepting the United States' offer, and the resolution issuing the bonds — as "Mayor of the Mayor and City Council of Ocean City", and his signature survives in facsimile on the appointment of judges dated 31 October 1935. He fired the starting gun for a Depression walkathon on the boardwalk on 8 June 1935; welcomed the American Legion's Maryland state convention on 4 September; sat in the conference of county and town officers that planned the boardwalk slot-machine raids of 23 August; threw out the first ball for Ocean City's new basketball team in December; and, when the sea went over the new jetties on 18 November, agreed with the Coast Guard that it was the worst storm since August 1933. He and the Council formally told the War Department in early 1935 that they feared the inlet jetties were unsafe. The Associated Press once printed his name as 'Thomas W. Elliott'; every other source, including the town's own hand, gives W. Thomas or W. T. Elliott. — 1936 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11: 1936 FULL PASS: extends the term. He was re-elected mayor at the special town election of Monday 3 August 1936 by 48 votes, unopposed, for two years from the second Monday of September 1936, and was sworn in by Magistrate Ralph B. Parsons on 8 September - so activeYears should read at least 1934-1938. In 1936 he signed the PWA resolutions of 9 June and 13 August, travelled to Baltimore with the town solicitor and the engineer to consult the Board of Health and Abel Wolman on the sewage plant, told a city-wide meeting on 30 September that the town needed $75,000 to rebuild the boardwalk and had no such money, put the hurricane damage first at $100,000 and then at over $150,000, and on 19 August 1936 broadcast for fifteen minutes on Ocean City over radio station WFBR in Baltimore. The Democratic Messenger of 30 July 1936 summarised his first two years: thirty carloads of cinders on the city streets, two new streets, two new sewer lines, WPA approval to pave the intersecting streets between Baltimore and Philadelphia avenues, and $4,000 of WPA funds sought to clay six more. — 1937 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11: 1937 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11: his fullest year in the record. He signed the acceptance of both halves of the PWA sewer (30 April and 8 June 1937); he moved the town's boardwalk assessment through the council and was authorised on 19 March 'to borrow enough money to settle for Board walk when needed'; he issued the correction that put the boardwalk's cost at $50,000 against the press's $100,000, and by June the audited figure was $38,945.63. He called the special meeting of 30 August that put the bridge location to a referendum and signed the resolution. He read the town's original plat and published the finding that the owners on the west side of Baltimore Avenue had 'confiscated' a third of a seventy-five-foot street over seventeen blocks — and said nothing could be done about it. He spent days computing that visitors had taken a million pounds of fish out of the sea between 1 July and 1 October from a fleet of fifty-two boats, and expressed the answer as a line of fish reaching from the Ocean City Pier to the Delaware statehouse. He published a $112,000 building list in November. And two things sit oddly together: crews dredging his own fifty-acre oyster bed four miles south of the town brought up twenty quarts of smuggled whisky in February; and in November his own Elliott Brothers Fish Company completed a private yacht harbour on the bay front, built to plans by the town's consulting engineers under a permit from the town council he headed and a permission from the War Department.
In the record (36)
1936 · 1936-02-18
Twenty-four meetings, four elected men and a clerk - and no meeting at all in January or April
The Mayor and City Council of Ocean City met twenty-four times in 1936: twice in February, once in March, once in May, five times in June, once in July, four times in August, three in September, twice in October, four in November and once in December. There is no January meeting and no April meeting on the record. The year opens on Tuesday 18 February with the reading of the minutes of 27 December 1935, the night the sewer contract was let, and closes at nine o'clock on 29 December. The whole government was Mayor W. Thomas Elliott; Councilmen William H. Scott, president of the council, W. Preston Laws and Dr. F. J. Townsend; J. M. Mumford as clerk, secretary and treasurer; and Edmond Johnson as solicitor - the four names printed on the town's letterhead of 1 September 1936. Ten of the twenty-four meetings turned on the sewer or the boardwalk. The first meeting of the year lasted fifty minutes and decided two things: to wait for better weather before repairing the boardwalk, and that the peddlers' ordinance the town already had was sufficient.
William H. ScottW. Preston LawsJohn M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1936 · 1936-06-09
The sewer contractor got thirty extra days and a waiver of damages because January and February 1936 were too cold to dig
A typed resolution pasted into the minute book records that on 9 June 1936, 'by reason of the unusally arduous winter and inclement weather prevailing during the past months of January and February, the contractor, A. Stanley Mundy & Co., Inc., under Contract No. 1, dated January 15, 1936, P. W. A. Docket No. Md. 1065-R for installing Intercepting Sewers and appurtenances at Ocean City, Maryland, was prevented from proceeding with said contract before March first' and would therefore be prevented from finishing within the five calendar months the contract allowed, 'to-wit, June 15th'. The Mayor and City Council unanimously extended the time by thirty days, waived the liquidated damages, and resolved that the P.W. Administrator be advised. It is signed W. Thomas Elliott, Mayor, and certified by J. M. Mumford as Clerk.
A. Stanley Mundy & Co., Inc.Federal Emergency Administration of Public WorksJohn M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1936 · 1936-06-26
Ocean City took its sewage plans to Baltimore and to Abel Wolman before it let the contract
The disposal plant was designed by Clark Gardner, the Salisbury city engineer, who acted as consulting engineer to Ocean City; the Messenger noted in August that he 'was here over the week end studying details of the new Ocean City sewage disposal system, which he designed.' On 29 February 1936 the council met Gardner specially 'to Consult on disposal Plant', and he reported that he had made adjustments with the Board of Health so that the plans would be acceptable to them and the town was ready to ask for bids on Disposal Plant Contract No. 2. Then, between the opening of the bids on 26 June and the award, Mayor W. Thomas Elliott, Edmond H. Johnson and Gardner travelled to Baltimore and 'Consulted with Mr. A. Wolman and Board of health as to best plan to follow'. Abel Wolman was chief engineer of the Maryland State Department of Health and the most influential sanitary engineer in America. The plant Ocean City built discharged into the inlet at the south end of Philadelphia Avenue.
Ocean City Inlet & JettyMaryland State Board of HealthClark Gardner
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1936 · 1936-06-26
Five contractors bid on Ocean City's sewage disposal plant in June 1936, from $74,510 to $98,902
Bids on the disposal plant - Contract No. 2 - were opened at a council meeting on Friday 26 June 1936: Virginia Engineering Co. Inc. of Newport News, Va., $98,902.58; George & Lynch of Dover, Del., $79,270.50; M. J. McDermott of Georgetown, Del., $74,510.48; A. Stanley Mundy Co. Inc. of Woodbridge, N.J., $81,593.38; and B. J. Contracting Co. of New York City, $88,247.00. The council tabulated them, held its decision on the award 'until future date' and returned the certified check of the New York bidder. The lowest bid was more than the entire federal grant. Between that meeting and the award, the clerk noted, Mayor Elliott, Edmond H. Johnson and the engineer Clark Gardner went to Baltimore to consult the Board of Health on the best plan to follow, and a request went to Washington for an additional grant of $6,750, forty-five per cent of $15,000. — 1937 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: M. J. McDermott of Georgetown, Delaware, the low bidder of 26 June 1936 at $74,510.48, did get the contract. He started work on 26 August 1936 under Contract No. 2 of PWA Docket Md. 1065-R and the Mayor and City Council accepted the completed plant on 8 June 1937. This closes an open research request from the 1936 pass. Note that the final construction cost is still NOT established: $74,510.48 is his bid, and the 1937 press printed three different totals for the whole system.
Maryland State Board of HealthA. Stanley Mundy & Co., Inc.Clark Gardner
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1936 · 1936-08-03
Ocean City's whole 1936 town election was forty-eight votes, cast between two and six on an August Monday, with nobody running against anybody
A special town election was held on Monday 3 August 1936 in the magistrate's office 'for Purpose of Electing one person for Mayor and three persons for Councilmen to serve two Years from second Monday of September 1936.' The polls were open from two o'clock until six. The returns filed with the clerk by the judges - Horace H. Richardson, S. J. Quillin and E. P. Calhoun - were: W. Thomas Elliott for Mayor, 48 votes; W. Preston Laws for Councilman, 48; Dr. F. J. Townsend, 48; W. H. Scott, 48. 'No other Votes were Cast.' The four were sworn in for two years by Magistrate Ralph B. Parsons at the regular meeting of 8 September. Nine months earlier the same electorate - property owners assessed with and owning $100 of town property for a year, under Chapter 45 of the Acts of 1935 - had turned out 105 voters to decide the sewer bonds by 104 to 1.
Forty-eight men re-elected a government that was halfway through building a sewer and six weeks from losing the boardwalk. The sewer had drawn more than twice the turnout: in this town money on the ballot brought people out and offices did not.
W. Preston LawsWilliam H. Scott
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1936 · 1936-08-19
Mayor Elliott went on Baltimore radio for fifteen minutes in August 1936 to advertise Ocean City
'Mayor W. Thomas Elliott, of Ocean City, was the guest of radio station WFBR at Baltimore yesterday (Wednesday) when a fifteen minute broadcast on Ocean City was presented over the air from 12.30 until 12.45 P. M.,' the Democratic Messenger reported on 20 August 1936. It is the earliest broadcast promotion of the resort the campaign has recovered, and it fits a season in which the town also voted $1,000 to the Chamber of Commerce and had the state's automobile dealers, its rural letter carriers and its poultrymen in for conventions.
Ocean City Chamber of Commerce
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1936 · 1936-09-18
On 18 September 1936 a hurricane took most of Ocean City's boardwalk, fifteen harbour-front homes and, for four hours, the town itself
A tropical hurricane moving up the coast reached Ocean City at noon on Friday 18 September 1936 and battered the town for fourteen hours with a north-east gale the Democratic Messenger put at seventy miles an hour. The Salisbury Times of that afternoon led 'Ocean City Is Isolated; Water Knee-Deep Over Bridge; Sea, Six Feet Above Normal High Tide Pounds Resort', and reported Governor Harry W. Nice ordering the National Guard to stand ready. Three to six feet of water covered the mainland approach to the State Highway bridge and ran a mile inland; the resort was cut off from noon until four o'clock. Five blocks of boardwalk between the Washington Pharmacy and the Colonial Hotel were swept away or badly damaged, and from the Shoreham Hotel north to the walk's end the whole structure was washed out - the storm sparing only the Majestic Hotel and its cottage, where not a shingle was lost. North of the Catholic Home a hundred-foot section of boardwalk was carried a block inland. Fifteen harbour-front dwellings and houseboat homes were demolished, and the office of Inlet Engineer E. J. Monahan, standing near the inlet, was swept away. Mayor W. Thomas Elliott first put the damage at $100,000 and within a week at more than $150,000, of which $50,000 was boardwalk and other municipal property. By 21 September, with boys from the nearby CCC camp helping to clear the debris, the estimate had risen to nearly a quarter of a million dollars. The town's immediate problem, the Times wrote, was 'digging itself out from under tons of sand carried inward from the beach.'
Ocean City's boardwalk has no founding date, but it has destruction dates, and 18 September 1936 is one of the biggest. The freak detail the town told and retold was the Majestic: everything on either side of it wrecked, and not a shingle off the hotel.
Ocean City BoardwalkThe BeachThe Shoreham Hotel / Shenanigan's Irish PubHarry W. Nice
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1936 · 1936-09-25
'Only 250 feet of that city's boardwalk has been left intact' - and Ocean City was hit worse than in 1933
The Worcester Democrat and the Ledger-Enterprise of Pocomoke City led its front page on Friday 25 September 1936 with 'ATLANTIC SEA BOARD IS LASHED BY HURRICANE - Much Damage Done By Rain And Wind Both On Land And On Sea - Ocean City Suffers Worse Than In 1933': 'Ocean City was stricken worse than on the day in 1933 when that August gale swept the coast. Only 250 feet of that city's boardwalk has been left intact, and it was feared for awhile serious damage would be done the bridge. Inhabitants of the place were marooned on the strip of land, on which Ocean City is built, since passage on the causeway was considered dangerous. No loss of life occurred... A vessel foundered off Lewes, Del., and two bodies of the crew washed up near Ocean City.' The Washington Evening Star's wire report of 19 September gives the storm as a 65-mile wind lashing the resort for twelve hours and the damage at $75,000 rising to $100,000, with Baltimore Street 'choked with a litter of variegated debris', sand two feet deep in some streets and in the basements of waterfront hotels, five feet of water over the causeway to Berlin at its height, one man reported drowned and six missing, a score of fishermen's shanties washed away along with the offices of Mayor Elliott and the Davis Lynch Fish Co., and at least three deep-sea fishing boats worth $5,000 to $6,000 destroyed or missing from their moorings in Sinepuxent Bay.
A judgment worth keeping: the 1936 hurricane was, in the eyes of the county's other paper, worse for Ocean City than the 1933 storm that made the inlet. The 1933 storm is the one everybody remembers, because it gave the town something.
a 65-to-70-mile gale for twelve to fourteen hours; damage estimates rose through the week from $75,000 to nearly $250,000
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1936 · 1936-10-23
Offered a $75,000 federal boardwalk, Ocean City chose to make its own property owners pay instead
Rebuilding the wrecked boardwalk was argued out in public for six weeks. At a city-wide meeting reported on 1 October, Mayor Elliott said the town needed about $75,000 to rebuild the ocean-front walk from the Ocean City pier northward to its terminus, over a mile and a half, and that the city was without such funds - while the charter put the expense on the individual owners of the adjacent properties, a proposition Ocean City residents 'have attacked as unfair and are united in their stand to refuse'. On 17 October Arthur K. Hungerford, State Director for Maryland of the National Emergency Council, told some eighty Ocean City business people at Col. Joseph M. Mann's cottage that there were no federal flood-control funds available, that hurricane money would have to come from the PWA or the WPA, and that a WPA grant would require Ocean City to furnish 55 to 60 per cent of the total cost. He proposed thirds: boardwalk property owners, the Mayor and Council, and the WPA. Daniel Trimper, Jr. costed the piling alone at about $21,000 - three thousand piles, four or five months to drive with average relief labour. Then on Friday evening 23 October the mayor, his three councilmen and the citizens' boardwalk committee met and abandoned the federal application altogether. Edmond Johnson, the town solicitor, read the council the law on compelling property owners to rebuild and said that in his judgment the city was holding the bag if it sponsored a WPA project. The minute is blunt: 'A long discussion was had and finally decided to go ahead & rebuild the walk without government aid.' — 1937 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The refusal held through the rebuilding. The Democratic Messenger of 11 March 1937 states that the ocean-front owners built the walk themselves, 'refusing to accept Federal or other financial aid'. The finished job cost $38,945.63, of which the assessed owners paid $17,377.92 and the town paid $21,567.71 — so the town, having refused $75,000 of federal money in October 1936, ended by paying more than half of a much smaller bill out of its own funds.
A town that had spent 1935 begging Washington for a sewer spent 1936 refusing Washington a boardwalk - because the arithmetic said the charter was cheaper: $53,900 by ordinance against $75,000 by grant, and no waiting.
Ocean City BoardwalkFederal Emergency Administration of Public WorksDaniel W. Trimper, Jr.Dr. Charles Washington Purnell
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-01-19
Seven weeks after Ordinance No. 55 the council put a figure on every ocean-front lot: $369.57 for fifty feet of twenty-four-foot boardwalk
On Tuesday evening 19 January 1937 Councilman W. H. Scott offered a resolution 'that Atlantic Ave. properties be assessed for Cost of Board walk as follows' and then read the town, lot by lot, down the whole ocean front. Two rates ran through the list, and they are the width of the walk in front of the door. Where the new walk was twenty-four feet wide the charge was $369.57 for a fifty-foot lot - $7.3914 a running foot; where it was sixteen feet the charge was $257.83 for fifty feet, $5.1566 a foot. Ernest E. Purnell, the Lizzie R. Hearn estate, Mollie E. Bassett, Frank Nikirk, the H. C. Spitzler estate and E. K. Wilson each paid $369.57 on fifty feet; the Del-Mar-Va Mortgage Company $739.14 on a hundred; Mrs. Layfette Johnson $1,108.71 on a hundred and fifty; the largest single charge on the roll, $1,546.98, fell on three hundred feet held by what the clerk wrote as the 'Dominican School'. Dr. F. J. Townsend, who was sitting as a councilman, was assessed twice on his own account. Dr. Townsend seconded, 'vote was unanimous', and the secretary was 'instructed to send bills for walk fronts as it was completed.' On 19 March the council went further and authorised the Mayor 'to borrow enough money to settle for Board walk when needed' - the town would front the cash and collect from the owners afterwards.
The 1936 pass left the boardwalk story on a promise: $7 a foot on 7,700 feet, owners who had organised to refuse, and no way to know whether anyone was ever billed. This is the bill. It is $7.39 a foot, not $7, it is itemised by name, and the vote to send it out was unanimous.
Ocean City BoardwalkWilliam H. ScottFrancis J. TownsendJohn M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-02-08
Ocean City borrowed its own $8,250 share of the sewer by issuing eight more thousand-dollar bonds at 4 per cent
'Whereas, in addition to funds granted and loaned to Mayor and City Council of Ocean City by the United States for the construction of sewers and disposal plant at Ocean City under P.W.A. Project No. Md. 1065-R, the municipality must furnish the sum of eight thousand two hundred fifty dollars ($8250.00)' - so on 8 February 1937 the council resolved to borrow $8,000 on the full faith and credit of the town and to issue 'eight negotiable interest bearing coupon bonds ... said bonds to be Nos. 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68 and 69 of the issue known as "Sewerage Bonds", to be in the denomination of one thousand dollars ($1,000.00) each, to be dated November 1, 1935, to bear interest at the rate of 4% per annum payable semi-annually on May 1st and November 1st of each year until maturity.' They were to be 'sold privately at par plus accrued interest.' W. Preston Laws moved it; the vote was unanimous and the Mayor approved it.
Federal Emergency Administration of Public WorksW. Preston LawsFrancis J. TownsendWilliam H. ScottJohn M. Mumford
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1937 · 1937-02-18
Twenty quarts of smuggled Scotch came up with the oysters from Mayor Elliott's own bed, four miles south of Ocean City
Under the head 'Liquor Found In Oyster Bed At Ocean City' the Messenger reported on 18 February 1937 that crews dredging Mayor W. Thomas Elliott's fifty-acre oyster bed four miles south of the town had brought up 'around 20 quarts of smuggled Canadian and Scotch whiskey' along with the oysters. Prohibition had been over for three years; the bottles were older than that, and they had been sitting on the bottom of Sinepuxent Bay since somebody put them there.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-03-11
Ocean City rebuilt its two-mile boardwalk on eighteen-foot creosoted piling in a single winter, and the owners paid for it themselves rather than take federal money
'Replacement of the two-mile boardwalk, demolished in last September's storm, with a walk that will be practically stormproof, is nearing completion at Ocean City,' the Democratic Messenger reported on 11 March 1937 under the head '$100,000 Ocean City "Stormproof" Boardwalk Is Nearly Built'. 'Fine creosoted-treated piles with the specially chemical-treated sills and stringers placed on the pilings, have been driven. Fourteen-inch drift iron pins have been used in the construction of the sub-walk. The boardwalk will be so strongly built, according to Mayor W. Thomas Elliott and the Council members, that it will take a very severe storm to tear it from the 18-foot pilings.' And on the question the 1936 pass could not answer: 'The construction has wholly been done by property owners on the ocean front, who placed the matter of purchasing materials and building in the hands of the Mayor and Council, refusing to accept Federal or other financial aid.' The work had begun in the winter: on 21 January 'the lower section from Dr. F. J. Townsend's drug store to the Coast Guard Station has been completed and is guaranteed for twenty years. The piling and the cap-sills have been completed to Ninth Street.' Top decking was Southern pine and the shipments were held up by floods in the middle West. On 29 April a storm hit the coast and 'Ocean City's new boardwalk withstood the onslaught of the ocean and little damage of consequence was done.'
The town that refused $75,000 of WPA money in October 1936 got its walk back before the season, built it stronger than the one the hurricane took, and had it storm-tested inside seven weeks of finishing.
Ocean City BoardwalkFrancis J. Townsend
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-03-31
The engineers had to come and tell Ocean City it would need a man to look after the sewage plant
'Mr. Clark Gardner and Dallas of Salisbury and Mr. Watson were present explaining the necessity of having a man to care for the plant' - 31 March 1937, six weeks before the works were accepted. On 15 April the follow-up question was put: 'Question of having Mr. Watson remain longer for to give instruction at the disposal plant was discussed and Mayor Elliott Called Gardner and it was not deemed necessary.' The town had built a mechanical sewage works and then had to be told, by its own engineers, that somebody would have to run it - and having been told, decided it did not need the extra fortnight of instruction. The same 31 March meeting discussed the grading of the streets, with the Mayor to see 'Mr. McDermott' about it, and the raising of the sidewalks on St. Louis Avenue.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-04-15
Ocean City's sewage plant went into operation in April 1937 with the first under-water sewage grinders in Maryland, and put the town's effluent into its own inlet
'Operation of the new PWA sewerage system and treatment plant at Ocean City will begin this week,' the consulting engineer Clark Gardner told the Messenger on 15 April 1937. The description is the fullest the campaign has of what was actually built. 'The intercepting sewer, constructed along Philadelphia avenue, consists of 7,750 lineal feet of cast iron pipe, varying in diameter from 12 to 20 ins., laid below mean high water of the Sinepuxent Bay.' The treatment plant stood 'on St. Louis Avenue between North First and North Second Sts.' and was 'capable of handling a maximum of 3,000,000 gallons of sewage a day.' 'Among the outstanding devices employed in the new plant are the units for grinding the raw sewage under water. After grinding the sewage is chlorinated in wet wells, and is discharged through a force main to the inlet. The under-water grinding devices, Gardner said, are the first to be used in Maryland.' The engineering problems he named were 'the extreme variation in sewage flow because of the large differential in summer and winter population, and ... the water pressure at the outlet, 16 feet below the level of the bay.' The works were 'formally turned over to the Mayor and Council on Tuesday of this week', the Messenger reported on 20 May, and 'Mr. Frank Tyre has been appointed Plant Superintendent by the Mayor and Council.' The council's own Resolutions of Acceptance followed on 30 April for the sewers and 8 June for the plant.
The inlet the 1933 hurricane opened had been the fishing fleet's harbour mouth for four years. From April 1937 it was also the town's outfall.
Ocean City Inlet & JettyFederal Emergency Administration of Public WorksM. J. McDermottA. Stanley Mundy & Co., Inc.Clark GardnerFrank Tyre
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1937 · 1937-04-26
The sewage plant ran eight months late because the contractor could not get cinders and brick, and because the Board of Health made him keep sewage out of the water mains
A typed resolution of 26 April 1937 sets out the whole history of the delay in the contractor's favour. 'M. J. McDermott under contract NO.2 started work on August 26th 1936 Docket Md.1065-2R Sewerage Treatment Plant and on Jan 4th 1937 time extended to April 26th 1937.' Two reasons are given for a further extension: '#1 Inability to obtain certain materials to meet specifications (cinders, brick, etc.)'; and '#2 - It became necessary, because of stipulation by the State Board of Health, to have the Roberts Filter Mfg. Co., Sub Contractor, design and submit for approval certain mechanical equipment to prevent the backing up of sewerage into the city water lines.' The council extended the time to 26 May 1937 and 'waive[d] the liquidated damages specified in said contract relative to failure to complete the work in time', directing that 'the State Director be advised of this action'. It was signed by Mayor W. Thomas Elliott, by William H. Scott as President of the City Council, and certified by J. M. Mumford.
A resort that had just voted 104 to 1 to put sewers in the sand was, eighteen months later, still waiting on a delivery of cinders - and on a Philadelphia filter company to invent a way of stopping the sewage getting into the drinking water.
M. J. McDermottRoberts Filter Manufacturing CompanyMaryland State Board of HealthFederal Emergency Administration of Public WorksM. J. McDermottWilliam H. ScottJohn M. Mumford
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1937 · 1937-04-30
Ocean City accepted its intercepting sewers from A. Stanley Mundy & Co. on 30 April 1937
At a meeting in the Municipal Building on 30 April 1937 the Mayor and City Council unanimously adopted a Resolution of Acceptance declaring that they had 'accepted as satisfactory - subject to prior acceptance by the Consulting Engineer - a system of Intercepting Sewers and Appurtenances recently constructed at Ocean City, Maryland, by the A. Stanley Mundy Company, Inc., of Woodbridge, New Jersey, under Contract No. 1, PWA Docket No. Md.1065-R', and directed the Clerk to notify the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. W. H. Scott moved it, Dr. F. J. Townsend seconded, and the motion carried. The council had signed Mundy's contract on 27 December 1935 and had given him a thirty-day extension in 1936 for 'the unusually arduous winter'; sixteen months later the pipe was in the ground and signed off.
A. Stanley Mundy & Co., Inc.Federal Emergency Administration of Public WorksWilliam H. ScottFrancis J. TownsendJohn M. MumfordClark Gardner
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1937 · 1937-06-07
Ocean City, Berlin and Pocomoke met to go after the county's liquor profits, and Ocean City authorised its solicitor to sue
The town solicitor 'reported on meeting held in Pocomoke City "Subject Liquor Profits" which he & Mayor Elliott attended at which were present Senator Veasey & Council from Berlin & Pocomoke at which meeting the legal Situation regarding old liquor profits Act were discussed'. On W. Preston Laws's motion, seconded by Dr. Townsend, 'the Council were Unanimous in Authorizeing Mr. Johnson to appear for the City in any legal Proceeding relating to liquor profits and endeavour to obtain Cities Share of Profits.' Three Worcester County towns acting together against the county over the proceeds of the state liquor dispensary is the largest piece of inter-municipal politics in Ocean City's 1937 record, and the town's own minute is the only account of it the campaign holds.
Edmond H. JohnsonW. Preston LawsFrancis J. Townsend
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1937 · 1937-06-07
Ocean City put two more men on the beach for the 1937 season
'Motion was made & carried that life Guard be increased by 2 men' - the last item of the meeting of 7 June 1937, taken with the season a fortnight off. The Beach Patrol had been seven men in August 1936. The same evening the council dealt with the rest of its public safety: Chief L. B. Cropper, Edw. Powell and Nottingham were present, and the council voted to pay Chief Cropper and Nottingham 'one dollar each a week for use of their Cars for town work'; and after discussing 'the regulation of fast driving on Balto & Phila Ave', it agreed to pass an ordinance forbidding reckless driving and instructed the solicitor to prepare it.
Ocean City Beach PatrolOcean City Police DepartmentL. B. CropperEdmond H. Johnson
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1937 · 1937-06-08
On 8 June 1937 Ocean City accepted its sewage treatment plant, and the two-year job the town had voted 104 to 1 for was finished
Dr. F. J. Townsend offered the resolution and W. Preston Laws seconded it, and it passed unanimously: the Mayor and City Council 'have accepted as satisfactory - Subject to prior acceptance by the Consulting Engineer - Sewerage Treatment Plant, Force mains, and Appurtenances recently Constructed at Ocean City, Maryland, by M. J. McDermott, of Georgetown, Delaware, under Contract #2 PWA Docket NO Md. 1065-2R.' The clerk was again to notify the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works. McDermott had bid $74,510.48 as the low bidder on 26 June 1936 and started work on 26 August 1936; the plant was in the ground in ten months and had been running long enough by 15 April 1937 for the council to decide it did not need the manufacturer's man to stay on and give instruction. The system had cost the town $61,000 of federal bonds, an $8,250 cash contribution of its own and a federal grant that had been raised to $56,659.
The 1936 pass closed with the sewer '70 per cent complete' and a hole where the answer should be. This is the answer, in the town's own hand: accepted, 8 June 1937, from the low bidder of the previous June.
M. J. McDermottFederal Emergency Administration of Public WorksM. J. McDermottFrancis J. TownsendW. Preston LawsJohn M. MumfordClark Gardner
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-06-24
The rebuilt boardwalk cost $38,945.63 — and the ocean-front owners paid $17,377.92 of it, less than half
The Messenger's annual survey of Ocean City's assessable basis, 24 June 1937, printed the settled account: 'the new Ocean City boardwalk, which cost a total of $38,945.63. The boardwalk cost was divided between city taxpayers whose properties lie adjacent to the walk and the administration. Taxpayers paid $17,377.92 while the city paid the remaining cost of $21,567.71.' That is 44.6 per cent to the assessed owners and 55.4 per cent to the town. Three figures had been in the air: the paper's own $100,000 in March for the whole repair bill; $23,000 from an unnamed source; and Mayor Elliott's revised $50,000, published on 18 March after he had 'figur[ed] detailed costs of the project, including discounts on material saved'. The final number is well under all of them, and it is a long way under what Ordinance No. 55 contemplated: $7 a running foot on about 7,700 feet is roughly $54,000, and the assessment roll of 19 January charged $7.39 a foot. The same article gives the town's assessable basis as $2,961,494, up $150,000 in the year and up from $800,000 in 1922, with the tax rate at $1 per $100.
Ordinance No. 55 was written to make the owners pay for the boardwalk. In the event the owners paid for a bit under half of it and the town quietly picked up the rest — which is the oldest arrangement in Ocean City and the one the town has never stopped renegotiating.
Ocean City BoardwalkJohn M. MumfordWilliam H. ScottW. Preston LawsFrancis J. Townsend
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-06-28
Ocean City ran its 1937 season on short notes from a Berlin bank - $3,000 in May and $3,000 in June
On 25 May 1937 the council resolved 'that the city under the signature of its Clerk and Mayor be and hereby is authorized to borrow from The Exchange and Savings Bank of Berlin Maryland the sum of Three Thousand ($3,000) dollars binding the full faith and credit of the City therefor by promissory note in appropiate form', and on 28 May the clerk sent the bank a note for 120 days with a cheque for the interest. On 28 June the council passed the identical resolution again, and on 29 June sent the bank a second note, this one for ninety days. A resort whose whole income arrived between June and September borrowed its way to the season twice in five weeks, on the town's letterhead and over the mayor's signature.
Exchange and Savings Bank of BerlinJohn M. MumfordFrancis J. TownsendW. Preston Laws
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-09-02
Five hundred and thirty voters, one-third of them living out of town, were entitled to choose where Ocean City's $900,000 bridge would land
The Messenger followed the bridge from soundings to statute. In April the State Roads Commission made borings in Ocean City harbour for a '$760,000' span while a delegation from Ocean City and West Ocean City petitioned with 150 property owners' signatures for a site south of Wicomico Street, preferably South Division Street; in March the Commission voted $1,000 for emergency repairs to the existing bridge. On 26 August the paper reported the 'Sinepuxent Bridge Bill passed by the Senate', 'providing for construction of bridge at either Wicomico, Worcester or South Division Streets, but people of Ocean City' to choose. On 2 September, under 'Ocean City To Hold Bridge Site Election Thursday; 530 Voters', it printed the mechanics: the special election on 9 September, polls at the Municipal Building on Dorchester Street from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., a ballot listing North Division, South Division, Wicomico and Worcester Streets with a blank for a write-in, and a cost now put at $900,000 with approaches. And it printed the franchise, which is the striking part: 'Under the Ocean City Charter, persons who are taxpayers on real or personal property at Ocean City, irrespective of their residence, may vote' — about a third of the 530 lived somewhere else. In December the delay in the plans sent the Chamber of Commerce to Governor Nice, and on 15 December W. Preston Laws and C. W. Purnell 'volunteered to go to Annapolis on Wednesday to tell Gov. Harry Nice where to put the new bridge at Ocean City.'
Maryland State Roads CommissionOcean City Chamber of CommerceW. Preston LawsDr. Charles Washington Purnell
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-09-07
On 7 September 1937 the council granted Chas. Henry a permit to build an addition to his property at Baltimore Avenue and South Division Street
The whole entry reads: 'Permit was granted Chas Henry to build addition to his property on Balto Ave and South Division street.' It is one line in a Tuesday evening minute between a rejected porch and a motion to buy six hundred feet of fire hose, and it is the first contemporary document of the Henry Hotel the campaign has found in any year. Baltimore Avenue and South Division Street is the hotel's address; the building had been open since 1895 and Charles and Louisa Henry had been running it under their own name since 1926. Eleven days earlier the same council had put the location of the new State Highway Bridge to a referendum in which South Division Street was one of the four choices on the ballot - the street the Henrys' hotel stands on - and it drew six votes out of 372.
Two thousand facts about this town, a POI with an address and an opening year, and not one line of evidence that the Henry Hotel existed. Here it is: the man is named, the corner is named, and he is building on.
The Henry HotelCharles & Louisa HenryJohn M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-09-09
The third county paper printed what the other two did not: Ocean City voted four to one for the old bridge site, and the mayor led one of the factions
'VOTERS OF RESORT PREFER SITE OF PRESENT BRIDGE — Decided By An Election Which Gave A Majority Of Four To One For Old Site,' the Worcester Democrat and the Ledger-Enterprise reported on 10 September 1937. 'Ocean City's long-continued and heated dissension over the location of a new bridge to connect it to the mainland drew to an end Thursday as residents and property owners resorted to the ballot box to fix the location of the bridge. Mayor Thomas W. Elliott called a special election several weeks ago. He heads one faction in the town. The State Roads Commission has the money for the bridge, but will not build it until the town decides where it is to be.' Then the argument itself, which no other source gives: 'One side in the dispute wants the bridge where the present one is located. They claim that Sinepuxent Bay, separating Ocean City from the mainland, is narrowest at this point. By building the span here, they add, some money will be left over for the approaches. The other group wants the second bridge north of the present one. They say that the new location will relieve traffic congestion by discharging its stream of cars into the widest street in the town. Also, they add, the new bridge would be north of the main fishing boat docks, so its draw span would not have to be opened as frequently as if it were built on the other site. All persons who live or own property in the town were permitted to vote. The same voting qualifications were required as in elections for City Councilmen.' The Smyrna Times of Delaware, which had covered the row five weeks earlier, says which faction was which and which one the mayor was in. 'The site of the new bridge has been in dispute for five months ... President Roosevelt approved the measure last week. A group of taxpayers advised Mayor W. Thomas Elliott to let the property owners vote on the question ... Under the Ocean City charter, any person who owns property in the resort town may vote in municipal elections. Among the property holders are persons with permanent residences in Wilmington, Del.; Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington, Salisbury, Md., and Berlin, Md. One group of citizens wants the new bridge built on the site of the present one. They say it will be cheaper because the bay is very narrow at this point. The state has $750,000 available for the construction ... The other main group wants the new bridge five blocks north of the present location. MAYOR ELLIOTT BELONGS TO THIS GROUP. They say that the bridge at this point would lead to North Division Street, which is twice as wide as any other Ocean City street ... there would be less danger to the bridge from tides because it would be farther from the Ocean City inlet to the ocean and that its draw would not have to be opened so much because it would be above most of the fishing docks in the harbor.' So the mayor who called the election, wrote the resolution and signed the notice was on the losing side of it: North Division Street took 83 votes to Worcester Street's 275.
Mayor Elliott called a referendum, put four streets on the ballot, and lost it three to one to the street he had not wanted. Four months later the state told the town the vote did not bind it anyway.
Ocean City Inlet & JettyMaryland State Roads Commission
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-09-09
Ocean City voted 275 to 97 for Worcester Street as the landing of its new highway bridge, and Congress had already written the choice into federal law
By an Act of the first session of the 75th Congress the State Roads Commission of Maryland was authorised 'to construct, maintain and operate a free highway bridge and approaches thereto across Sinepuxent Bay, at Worcester Street, or South Division Street or Wicomico Street, in Worcester County, Maryland, at Ocean City' - and the Act further provided that if the town's voters designated a preference for some other point, 'then such designation shall be the point fixed for the building of said bridge.' The council called a special meeting on 30 August 1937 and, on F. J. Townsend's motion seconded by W. Preston Laws, resolved 3-0 to put the question to the voters on 9 September, polls at the Municipal Building from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., ballot listing Worcester, Wicomico, South Division and North Division Streets with a blank line for a write-in. The judges of election were Wm. G. Rounds, Edwin P. Calhoun and Edward Kurtz, and the result the clerk entered was: Worcester 275, North Division 83, Wicomico 7, South Division 6, North 1st Street 1. Worcester Street is where the bridge was built and where the causeway still lands.
A town of a few hundred voters was handed, by federal statute, the power to overrule Congress on where its own bridge would touch the island - and used it to confirm the obvious.
Maryland State Roads CommissionFrancis J. TownsendW. Preston LawsWilliam H. ScottJohn M. MumfordWilliam G. RoundsEdwin P. CalhounEdward Kurtz
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-11-12
The mayor's own fish company dredged a private yacht harbour on the Ocean City bay front, by permission of the War Department
'OCEAN CITY YACHT HARBOR COMPLETED - Ocean City, Md., Nov. 12 - Dredging of a new yacht harbor along the Ocean City bay front [near] North [Division] Street by the Elliott Brothers Fish Company was completed yesterday. Permission to construct the [harbor] was recently granted by the War Department. Mayor W. Thomas Elliott of Ocean City [heads] the Elliott Fishing [Company].' The town council had given Elliott Bros. leave on 13 July to dike their land between North First and North Second Streets and dig a basin to plans by Gardner & Dallas - the town's own consulting engineers. The mayor's list of the winter's building put the yacht harbour at $3,000. Ocean City's mayor was also its largest fish packer, and in 1937 he had the council's permit, the War Department's permission and the town engineer's drawings for a harbour of his own.
Elliott Brothers Fish CompanyClark Gardner
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-11-18
Ocean City counted $112,000 of building under way in November 1937, more than half of it one apartment house
Mayor Elliott's winter building list, printed on 18 November 1937 under '$112,000 Building Boom Makes Things Hum At Ocean City', is the clearest snapshot of the resort's private capital in the year: 'Calvin P. Pruitt Apartment House, $60,000; J. Dale Showell, Jr., Oceanic Hotel improvements, $10,000; John B. Lynch, cottage, $10,000; Charles Powell double houses, $6,000; William E. Gibbs apartment, $4,000; Elliott Bros., yacht harbor, $3,000; Mrs. John Lynch cottage improvements, $1,500; Chas. Henry Hotel for Negroes, $1,500.' The public side of the same list carried a $4,000 comfort station, a new 370-foot boardwalk section between South First and Somerset Streets 'of which the Windsor Resort Company is bearing part of the cost', the sewer extension west of Philadelphia Avenue, the Frank Magee bay-front anchorage basin and docks, and proposed sidewalks off North Philadelphia Avenue. In the same year the town's assessable basis rose $150,000 to $2,961,494. Elliott Bros. 'finished digging their yacht harbor north of North Division Street' in November, four months after the council gave them leave to dike the ground.
Ocean City BoardwalkThe Henry HotelJohn B. LynchWilliam E. GibbsCharles & Louisa Henry
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-11-18
Ocean City's Black hotel appears on the mayor's own 1937 building list: 'Chas. Henry Hotel for Negroes, $1,500'
On 18 November 1937 the Democratic Messenger printed Mayor W. Thomas Elliott's itemised account of the winter's construction under the head '$112,000 Building Boom Makes Things Hum At Ocean City'. The private projects ran: 'Calvin P. Pruitt Apartment House, $60,000; J. Dale Showell, Jr., Oceanic Hotel improvements, $10,000; John B. Lynch, cottage, $10,000; Charles Powell double houses, $6,000; William E. Gibbs apartment, $4,000; Elliott Bros., yacht harbor, $3,000; Mrs. John Lynch cottage improvements, $1,500; Chas. Henry Hotel for Negroes, $1,500.' It is the smallest item on the list and it is on the list — the Black hotel at Baltimore Avenue and South Division Street counted by the town's own administration as part of the resort's building boom, forty-two years after it opened. It is also the corroboration of the building permit the council had granted Chas. Henry on 7 September for 'an addition to his property on Balto Ave and South Division street', and it is the first time in the whole campaign that a source names the Henry establishment as a hotel. The same article lists the public works of the winter: a $4,000 comfort station, the 370-foot boardwalk section between South First and Somerset Streets, and the sewer extension west of Philadelphia Avenue.
Two thousand facts, and the Henry Hotel had never been mentioned in one of them. Here it is twice in ten weeks — in the permit book and on the mayor's list — described in the language of 1937 and counted in the town's own money.
The Henry HotelOcean City BoardwalkCharles & Louisa HenryJohn B. LynchWilliam E. Gibbs
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-11-24
Sportsmen took a million pounds of fish out of Ocean City in the summer of 1937 from a fleet of fifty-two boats, and the mayor did the arithmetic himself
'Now it can be told,' the Salisbury Times reported on 24 November 1937, 'so declares Mayor W. Thomas Elliott ... who has figured out, after days of work, approximately how many pounds of fish were caught by deep-sea fishing sportsmen during the past summer off Ocean City. A total of over 1,000,000 pounds of deep sea fish were landed by visitors here between July 1 and October 1 ... Fifty-two deep-sea fishing boats operated from Ocean City during the summer ... The average catch per angler was 22 pounds of fish. If put end to end, says Mayor Elliott, all of the deep sea fish caught off Ocean City during the season of 1937 would extend from the Ocean City Pier to the statehouse at Dover, Del., figuring at 3 pounds of fish per foot.' Commercially the year ran from a peak to a wipe-out and back: in April Elliott called 8,500 boxes handled in one day 'the biggest catch I have ever known', and the pounds that had netted 1,500 barrels the previous Friday were all fifteen of them destroyed by the northeaster of 26 April at a loss of $30,000 to $40,000. A day's excursion on the yacht Jim-Dandy from Trimper Dock, leaving 8.30 and back at 6.30, cost $2.00 a person.
The mayor of a town of a few hundred people spent days of his own time counting the visitors' fish, then converted the answer into a line of dead fish reaching another state's capitol. That is not a fisheries statistic; it is an advertisement, and it is the moment Ocean City understands what it is selling.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-11-29
Mayor Elliott read the original town plat and found that Ocean City's owners had quietly taken a third of Baltimore Avenue
'Growth has been so rapid during [the] last 45 years at Ocean City [that] over two score of property owners have, legally speaking, "moved into the street",' the Salisbury Times reported on 29 November 1937. 'Mayor W. Thomas Elliott, after careful study of early town records, has found, to his dismay, that residents living on the west side of Baltimore Avenue have "confiscated" one-third of the street along a 17-block area. From South Division street southward two blocks to the Ocean City Inlet and from North Division street northward fifteen blocks to North 16th Street, Baltimore Avenue ... has a legal width of 75 [feet]. But today, the street in that area measures only 50 feet in width ... A copy of the plat of the original town of Ocean City, surveyed 70 years ago, is on record in the Worcester County Court House at Snow Hill. The plat has never been amended. ... Mayor Elliott says nothing can be done' - and noted that if anything were done, the property owners 'might be inclined to seek a rebate on back taxes'. The stretch he describes runs through the corner of Baltimore Avenue and South Division Street, where the Henry Hotel stands.
The founding plat of Ocean City had been quietly overwritten by sixty years of porches, and when the mayor finally looked it up the town's answer was to look away.
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1937 · 1937-12-14
The town's own online minute archive lists 21 Ocean City council meetings for 1937; the minute pages themselves record 24
The IQM2 calendar returns 21 meetings for 1 January to 31 December 1937, each with exactly one document, all of them Type=15 summary minutes, 21 PDFs carrying 32 scanned page images between them. Reading those 32 images turns up three sittings that have no calendar entry at all: a regular meeting on 25 May 1937, known only from a letter to the Exchange and Savings Bank quoting a resolution 'passed at our regular meeting of May 25th 1937'; a meeting on 13 September 1937 that awarded the winter garbage contract, written into the same page as the 9 September election result; and a meeting on 23 November 1937 that awarded the comfort station contracts, written in behind the minute of 16 November. The council did not meet at all between 13 July and 30 August, or in October, or in December before the 14th. Ocean City's councillors through 1937 were W. Preston Laws, Dr. F. J. Townsend and William H. Scott, with W. Thomas Elliott as mayor, J. M. Mumford as clerk and Edmond Johnson as solicitor - the same five men, unchanged, as in 1936.
The archive is an index to the minute book, not a copy of it. Three meetings out of twenty-four are invisible to anyone who trusts the calendar - which is a nine per cent error rate on a source this campaign is about to run through ninety more years.
W. Preston LawsFrancis J. TownsendWilliam H. ScottJohn M. MumfordEdmond H. Johnson
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1938 · 1938-06-06
Nine months after voting four to one for Worcester Street, Ocean City signed away North Division and Caroline Streets for the new bridge instead
On 9 September 1937 the town voted 275 to 97 for Worcester Street as the landing of its new highway bridge, in a referendum Congress itself had written into the bridge authorisation. On 30 December 1937 the state said the vote was not binding. On the morning of Monday 6 June 1938, at a special meeting called for the purpose, the Mayor and City Council of Ocean City enacted an ordinance approving the State Roads Commission's plans 'for the Construction of a bridge over Sinepuxent Bay from Ocean City to the mainland, and its Approaches in the Beds of North Division Street and Caroline Street', under the Commission's Contract No. WO-180, and granted the State of Maryland the public easement in the beds of both streets from Philadelphia Avenue to Sinepuxent Bay - reserving to itself, in Section 3, 'the full power and right at all times to enact and enforce all such traffic and parking rules and regulations' and all other police powers. The State Roads Commission accepted the grant by resolution at its Baltimore office on 27 July 1938, on the motion of Mr. Jarboe seconded by Mr. Luthardt, and sent a certified copy back to the town over the signature of its secretary L. H. Steuart, which was copied into the minute book. Ocean City's own council thus enacted the defeat of Ocean City's own referendum, and did it unanimously in a nine-thirty morning session. — 1940 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The 1938 fact records Ocean City signing away North Division and Caroline Streets. Two things are now added, neither of which changes it. First, the State Roads Commission formally ACCEPTED the grant by resolution at its Baltimore office on 27 July 1938, moved by Mr. Barboe and seconded by Mr. Luthardt, and a certified copy signed by L. H. Stewart, Secretary, is filed in the Ocean City minute book. Second, the town REPEALED the grant by ordinance on 15 January 1940 at a special meeting called by the new mayor - and then, on 12 March 1940, had to ask its own attorney whether the repeal was valid or whether the previous council's grant still held. The 1938 transaction was therefore not final, and the campaign should stop treating it as the end of the bridge fight.
The only time Congress ever gave a Maryland resort town a veto over a federal bridge, the town used it, won it four to one, and then thirteen weeks after the state overruled the result passed an ordinance handing over the streets the losing side had wanted. The referendum is in the record and so is the ordinance, and the ordinance is the one that built the bridge.
Maryland State Roads CommissionW. Preston LawsJ. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1938 · 1938-06-21
After four straight years at a dollar, Ocean City cut its tax rate to 85 cents in June 1938 - six weeks before an election
The dollar on the hundred had held since 1934. On 31 May 1938 'a discussion was had on reducing the tax rate 20% and no decision was reached leaving until a later date.' On 21 June, on Dr. Townsend's motion seconded by Preston Laws, 'levy was passed for 1938 at 85 Cents per $100' - a cut of fifteen per cent, not twenty. Six weeks later the mayor who presided over it did not stand for re-election and the councilman who moved it was beaten. In November the new council was asked by F. W. Truitt, Cecil Blake, Parker Smith and Dr. Buhrman to put enough back on the rate to raise $4,000 for the Chamber of Commerce to advertise with, and had to answer that 'for present year the tax levy was made and there could be very little done'.
Francis J. TownsendW. Preston Laws
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1938 · 1938-07-27
On 27 July 1938 Ocean City handed Philadelphia Avenue north of Ninth Street to the State of Maryland, and the Coastal Highway was born out of a town street
At a special meeting on the evening of Wednesday 27 July 1938 - the mayor and two councilmen present, moved by Dr. Townsend and seconded by Preston Laws - Ocean City passed an ordinance granting the State Roads Commission 'the title in and to the bed of Phila. Ave and the intersecting streets from south Side of Ninth Street to the northerly Corporate limits of Ocean City, and the title to a portion of Lots # 7, 8, 9, 10 & 11 in Block 53 of a plat of Ocean City', for the purpose of 'Constructing a Costal highway leading from Ocean City to the Delaware line', under the Commission's Contract No. WO-171-1-1019 and its plats Nos. 3250 and 3251. The recital is explicit that the lots the state wanted were the town's own and were 'used in Connection with their Water System'. A week earlier, on 20 July, the council had already voted to deed the state eighteen to twenty feet off Baltimore Avenue frontage of the same lots 'for the widening of Phila. Ave. from 9th to 15th St.' and to grant the easement in the street bed from 9th to 15th. The State Roads Commission accepted the whole grant at its Baltimore meeting on 28 July 1938, again on Jarboe's motion seconded by Luthardt, and the resolution was copied into the town's minute book. Section 3 kept the town's police power, its traffic rules and its parking rules over the road - which is why parking on Coastal Highway has been an Ocean City question ever since. — 1938 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The purpose and price of the road the town gave Philadelphia Avenue for are now attested from outside the minute book. The Worcester Democrat and the Ledger-Enterprise of 8 July 1938, page 2, file 0391, gives it as a $200,000 coastal highway to meet the Delaware seacoast road at the state line, one lane to be built that summer, a dual highway only hoped for. The State Roads Commission's own operating report for fiscal 1939-1940 subsequently records the highway as COMPLETED and Rehoboth as thirty miles from Ocean City by road.
Everything north of Ninth Street in Ocean City is built along a road the town gave away in a single evening in July 1938 to get a concrete highway to Delaware. It cost the town its own street, part of its waterworks lot, and nothing else - and it is the single decision that made the modern island possible.
Maryland State Roads CommissionFrancis J. TownsendW. Preston LawsJ. M. Mumford
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1938 · 1938-08-01
Ocean City turned out its mayor of four years in August 1938 and elected its own lawyer, on 323 votes cast between two o'clock and six
The minute of 1 August 1938 records 'A Special town Election was held in Firemans Building for purpose of Electing one person for mayor and three persons for Councilmen to serve two Years'. The returns, filed by the election judges Stephen J. Quillen, Horace O. Cropper and Williams, were: 'For Edmund H Johnson for Mayor 323 Votes. Harold J Rayne for Councilman 219 Votes. E Raymond Bounds 216. C.P. Cropper 199. John D Ayres 149. C Parker Smith 136. Dr. Francis J Townsend 154. No other Votes were Cast. Election held from 2 O'Clock P.M. Until 6 O'Clock P.M.' Six men ran for three council seats and the sitting councilman, Dr. Francis J. Townsend, came fourth and lost. W. Thomas Elliott, mayor since 1934, does not appear on the return at all - no votes were cast for him, and he did not stand. The man who replaced him was the town's own solicitor, Edmond H. Johnson, who nine weeks earlier had been appointed the council's attorney to collect Ocean City's share of the Worcester County liquor profits and had been paid $915 for the work on 31 May.
A four-hour poll in the firehouse, 323 votes, and the resort changed hands. Ocean City did not so much elect an outsider as promote its lawyer - and the councilman who had spent the year pushing sanitary ordinances the council would not second was the one the voters removed.
Edmond H. JohnsonHarold J. RayneE. Raymond BoundsClifford P. CropperFrancis J. TownsendStephen J. QuillenHorace O. CropperC. Parker Smith
Source · checked 2026-08-11