William W. McCabe
mayor · active 1922–1934
Mayor of Ocean City from 1922 to 1934, and the man who turned the town's worst disaster into its best asset. McCabe had campaigned for a bay-to-ocean inlet before the 1933 storm — by June 1933 he was pushing a proposed $781,000 inlet project through President Roosevelt's public-works bill, in direct contact with the War Department's Baltimore engineer. When the August hurricane cut the channel naturally, he moved fast to have it jettied and made permanent. He also helped found the Ocean City Beach Patrol in 1930 with Coast Guard Capt. William Purnell. He was the son of William Robbins McCabe of Selbyville, Delaware — Speaker of the Delaware House and founder of the Selbyville Bank — and brother of Thomas B. McCabe, president of the Scott Paper Company. He is documented as mayor throughout 1930, and in April of that year he PETITIONED JUDGE MORRIS A. SOPER for a day parole for the twenty-nine rum-smuggling convicts being held in Ocean City's own municipal hall, on the ground that their families were "facing starvation and want." — 1934 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11: DO NOT change the name — record a conflict. The registry has 'William W. McCabe'. The town's own succession list, typed by secretary J. M. Mumford on 24 December 1934 and filed in the minute book, reads '1922 William C. McCabe served to Sept 1934' — middle initial C. But the Salisbury Times of 19 June 1934, reporting the flying-bluefish stunt, writes 'Mayor W. W. McCabe', agreeing with the registry. So two 1934 sources, one of them his own clerk, disagree on the middle initial, and the existing value should stand with a DataConflict recorded rather than be corrected either way. What the minutes DO fix is the end of the mayoralty: McCabe presided over council meetings through 21 August 1934, did not stand in the uncontested election of 6 August, and handed over when W. Thomas Elliott was sworn in by Magistrate Hall on 10 September 1934 — 'served to Sept 1934' in Mumford's own phrase. Also worth adding to the bio: in June 1934 he was guest of honour, with 'A. R. Holcombe, local editor', at two Baltimore club luncheons that ate two hundred pounds of Ocean City bluefish flown up by the Chamber of Commerce. — 1936 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11: 1936 FULL PASS: he was still the town's public statistician two years out of office. On 9 July 1936 the Democratic Messenger reported that 'Former Mayor William W. McCabe of Ocean City estimated that between 80,000 and 90,000 persons visited Ocean City over the week end' of 4 July, spending something like $200,000 - against the state police's actual count of over 7,000 cars through the harbour bridge in nine hours. He was also active on the mainland: in January 1936 'W. W. McCabe, of Salisbury and Ocean City' testified in favour of improving the Wicomico River for shipping. His son Tilghman McCabe was working as a federal inspector in 1936.
The rare politician whose lobbying was answered by the weather. McCabe asked Washington for an inlet; the ocean delivered it early, and he had the paperwork ready.
In the record (45)
1922 · 1922-08-07
William W. McCabe is elected mayor of Ocean City on Monday 7 August 1922 with nobody running against him — the first uncontested municipal election there in years.
The Democratic Messenger of 12 August 1922, under MCCABE ELECTED OCEAN CITY MAYOR: "Ocean City Municipal election was without a contest last Monday, the following ticket being unopposed: Mayor — William W. McCabe. Councilmen — E. J. Thomas, Clifford Cropper and John W. Mumford. This is the first time for a number of years that the election at Ocean City has not been a hot contest. All united on Mayor-elect McCabe and those elected with him to serve as Councilmen." This dates the start of the McCabe era exactly. His predecessor Elbridge E. Collins was still in office in June, when the Messenger reported "State's Attorney William G. Kerbin and Mayor Collins, of Ocean City" promising an investigation into the attack on the town lockup. McCabe would hold the office until 1934, through the 1925 fire and the 1933 storm, and would be the man who turned the storm-cut inlet into a permanent harbour.
Elbridge E. CollinsClifford P. Cropper
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1923
Mayor McCabe puts up an apartment house on the boardwalk above the Shoreham, and contemplates a $50,000 second one on Atlantic Avenue.
'Ocean City News', 28 April 1923: "Mayor William W. McCabe is supervising the erection of his apartment house on the Boardwalk above the Shoreham, and is expecting to have it completed before the first of June." The season preview of 31 March lists a further "apartment house on Atlantic avenue… being contemplated by W. W. McCabe at an expenditure of $50,000." The Board of Trade's May report counts "a large apartment house" among the winter's additions to the town's capacity.
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1923 · 1923-01-27
After a boy slips off the piling, the Mayor and Council make it unlawful to fish or bathe on the new jetties.
The Worcester Democrat's 'Ocean City News' column, 27 January 1923: "The Mayor and Council of the City have passed an ordinance forbidding any person from using the new jetties for either fishing or bathing. The danger in walking out on these jetties lies chiefly in their natural slippery condition and in the fact that the swirl of waters around the foundation makes the [wan]ton use of them especially dangerous. One of our boys John Laws, slipped from the piling, and suffered injuries which have kept him confined to his home for several weeks."
Nine months after Ocean City got its first piece of hard shore protection, it had its first ordinance about people climbing on it.
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1923 · 1923-01-27
Ocean City's electric light plant lays foundations for a new oil engine, and the winter's other work is remodelling the boardwalk.
'Ocean City News', 27 January 1923: "The work at Ocean City this year has been devoted to the remodelling and repairing of the boardwalk, which has been conducted under the direction of the Mayor, and which has also been accompanied by the remodelling of many of the boarding houses along the Avenue. The electric light plant of Ocean City has started work on the new foundations for the oil engine which is to supply the power for the electric light of the City. This improvement is a much needed one, and will add to the efficiency of the town lights. It is expected that the engine will be installed before spring."
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1923 · 1923-03-31
Ocean City expects to pass $500,000 in building before the 1923 season opens — more construction in one winter than ever before.
'OCEAN CITY PREPARES TO WELCOME VACATIONISTS — Sewer And Lighting System Improved, New Concrete Street Laid, And Several Hotels Built' (Worcester Democrat, 31 March 1923): "More new buildings have been constructed and renovations made since the close of the season last fall than ever before in a similar period of time. Before the 1923 season opens, it is estimated that building activities will pass the $500,000 mark." Named projects completed: an apartment house at Baltimore and South streets by B. J. Constantine, $25,000; the residence of L. F. Purnell, $15,000; W. T. Purnell remodeling and adding to the Maryland Hotel on Atlantic Avenue, $25,000; and Mrs. Josephine Hastings' new "modern daylight hotel" on the boardwalk at $65,000. Contemplated: another apartment house on Atlantic Avenue by Mayor W. W. McCabe at $50,000, and a cottage by Gillette Gill on Baltimore Avenue at $12,000. The same article reports workmen engaged on an improved sewer system for residences and hotels, a new lighting system to be installed, and 3,000 feet of concrete contemplated as an extension of Baltimore Avenue and on intersecting streets. "Mayor McCabe states that 1923 will be a record year for Ocean City, and with that statement all residents are in accord."
In 1922 the paper announced a boom of fifteen cottages and an unnamed half-million-dollar hotel that never appeared. In 1923 the half million turns up anyway — spread across a dozen buildings, most of them owned by people who already lived there.
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1923 · 1923-04-28
Capt. William I. Purnell, keeper of the Ocean City Coast Guard station, opens a 22-room hotel across the road from it — the Maryland Inn.
The 'Ocean City News' column of 28 April 1923: "Mr. Charles S. Powell, contractor, has finished and turned over to its owners the new hotel of Capt. William I. Purnell, opposite the Coast Guard Station. It contains 22 rooms with bath and surf accommodations, and will be known as the Maryland Inn." By late July the Inn was the town's ceremonial room: Purnell gave a terrapin dinner there for Mayor McCabe and friends from Salisbury, and the Children's Guild of St. Paul's-by-the-Sea held its bazaar there.
The man paid by the federal government to pull people out of the surf spent 1923 selling them rooms with a view of it.
Built or substantially rebuilt in 1923 by a Purnell — the same paper gives the initials as both W. I. and W. T., and calls the work both new construction and a remodeling.
United States Coast GuardCapt. William I. Purnell
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1923 · 1923-07-28
Senator John Walter Smith and Mrs. John Waggaman sign the Plimhimmon's register, and the Coast Guard keeper gives a terrapin dinner for the mayor.
Worcester Democrat, 28 July 1923: "Captain William I. Purnell gave a terrapin dinner to a number of his friends at the Maryland Inn, among whom were Messrs. F. W. C. Webb, W. G. Gordy, Marion Humphreys, Graham Gunby, of Salisbury, and Mayor Wm. W. McCabe of Ocean City. Recent visitors at the Plimhimmon during last week were Senator John Walter Smith, of Baltimore; Mrs. John Waggeman, of Annapolis, and Mrs. McCallum of Philadelphia; Mrs. William Price of Centreville, and Mr. and Mrs. Walter V. Harrison, of Baltimore." Earlier in July the Plimhimmon had registered "Mrs. Charles E. Bentley, of New York… for the summer," entertaining friends from New York.
Plimhimmon Hotel / Plim PlazaJohn Walter SmithJohn F. WaggamanCapt. William I. Purnell
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1923 · 1923-09-12
Ocean City votes in the county primary in E. Z. Purnell's storehouse on Baltimore Avenue.
The Worcester County notice of the 1923 Democratic primary election, printed in the Worcester Democrat of 25 August, lists the polling place for "THIRD DISTRICT, Precinct No. 2" as "the storehouse of E. Z. Purnell, on Baltimore Avenue, Ocean City." The town had no municipal election of its own in 1923; Mayor McCabe and his three councilmen had been returned unopposed in August 1922.
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1924
More than a hundred property owners renominate Mayor McCabe and his three councilmen by acclamation, and nobody stands against them.
Worcester Democrat, 9 August 1924: 'Mayor And Council Of Ocean City Renominated — At an election held recently in Ocean City, Md., the Mayor and City Council were renominated without opposition on a non-partisan ticket. This means that the election of municipal officers August 12 will not be contested. The officials are William W. McCabe, Mayor, and John M. Mumford, Edward J. Thomas and Clifford Cropper, Councilmen. They have held office two years. They were renominated by acclamation at a meeting of more than 100 property owners of the seashore resort.' The same three men had been returned unopposed with McCabe in 1922; Chapter 405 of 1924, passed four months earlier, fixed the election for the first Monday in August, which fell on the 4th — the paper's 'August 12' is the only date printed and is recorded as given.
August 1924 — the statute says the first Monday, the county paper says the 12th
Clifford P. CropperE. J. ThomasJohn W. Mumford
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1924 · 1924-04-09
Chapter 119 writes Ocean City a new section 172-A — four printed pages of everything a Mayor and Council may now regulate.
The act repeals sections 169 and 175 of Staton's Code of Public Local Laws of Worcester County, title Ocean City, re-enacts them, and adds a wholly new section 172-A: a general grant of ordinance power running to roughly four pages of the session laws. It authorises the town to define fire limits and refuse building licences within them; to inspect buildings and pull down dangerous ones; 'to regulate the location, size, character and cost of all buildings to be erected'; to appoint a Board of Health, keep a pest house, establish quarantine; to license, tax or prohibit theatres and moving-picture houses, hawkers, pawnbrokers, taxicabmen, dance halls, pool rooms, soda fountains, bowling alleys, 'places where soft drinks are disposed of', ice-cream wagons, popcorn machines, gasoline stations, bill boards, medicine shows and street vendors; to suppress bawdy houses and 'prohibit the youth of said city from being on the streets, lanes or alleys at unreasonable hours of the night'; to keep a city prison and set prisoners to work out their fines on the streets. Two clauses are pure resort: the power to license 'branch stores or establishments and all other concerns established in said city for temporary or seasonal business only', and the power to license or prohibit 'all sales advertised as removal sales, fire sales, closing out sales … damaged goods sales'. The re-enacted section 169 lets the town compel the grading and improvement of streets and sidewalks at the abutting owners' expense, 'by the placing of pavements, curbing, shells, dirt, boardwalks or other improvements' — the board walk still a paving material in Maryland law in 1924.
A town of some seven hundred permanent residents took, in one April afternoon, the ordinance powers of a city — because for ten weeks a year it is one.
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1924 · 1924-04-09
Chapter 405 re-writes who may vote in Ocean City: 'A voter, whether man or woman' — and still, $100 of assessed property.
The act repeals section 161 as amended by Chapter 299 of 1920 and re-enacts it. 'The qualifications of voters in town elections of Ocean City shall be as follows: A voter, whether man or woman, must be a citizen of the United States and twenty-one years of age or over and must be one who for one year next preceding the election has been and is, at the time of the election, assessed on the tax books of said town with, and is the owner of, real or personal property of the value of at least one hundred dollars' — or a proportionate shareholder in a corporation so assessed. No one may vote whose town taxes are unpaid. Those so qualified 'shall on the first Monday in August, 1924, and every second year thereafter elect by ballot one person to be Mayor of said City and three persons to be City Councilmen', all of whom must own real estate in the town and at least two of the council be bona fide residents, to serve two years from the second Monday in September. The act is an emergency law and took effect on passage. Four years after the Nineteenth Amendment, Ocean City's franchise is explicitly sexless and explicitly propertied.
Women could vote in Ocean City in 1924 on exactly the same terms as men: own a hundred dollars' worth of the town.
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1924 · 1924-04-09
Chapter 118 lets Ocean City borrow $10,000 in six per cent bonds for street improvement and the water system.
Approved 9 April 1924 as an emergency law. 'Ocean City Street Improvement and Water System Bonds of 1924', dated 1 January 1924, in denominations of $100 to $1,000, six per centum payable half-yearly, exempt from state, county and municipal taxation, issued in ten series of $1,000 and redeemable one series a year beginning 1 January 1939. None to be sold below par. The proceeds go 'for the purpose of improvements of the streets and highways of said town, to the betterment of the water system and to such other proper public purposes as in the judgment of the said Mayor and City Council may seem advisable.' Two years after the $25,000 Baltimore Avenue bonds of 1922, the town borrows again — and this time the water works are named alongside the streets.
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1925 · 1925-07-13
Governors Ritchie of Maryland and Robinson of Delaware, two congressmen and a Virginia gubernatorial candidate all spoke at Ocean City in one evening, 13 July 1925.
The Maryland Press Association and the Del-Mar-Via Press Association held their joint summer outing at Ocean City on 12–14 July 1925, more than eighty newspapermen, entertained free of charge by the Board of Trade and the hotel proprietors. Monday's meeting was in the auditorium of the State School building, decorated with flags and bunting; the address of welcome was made by Mayor William McCabe, with responses from Ridgely Melvin of Annapolis and Edwin H. Brown of Centreville, presidents of the two associations. State Comptroller William S. Gordy, Jr. "explained why the several counties had not received their full quota of school funds." Charles A. Carter of the Colonial Hotel, "a former western newspaper man," welcomed the visitors for the hotel men; "The formal welcome on behalf of the Board of Trade was made by Dr. Charles W. Purnell, its president, and also proprietor of the Atlantic Hotel." At noon the party took a motor-boat cruise down Sinepuxent Bay to the inlet, "enlivened by a jazz orchestra," and landed at "Eagle's Nest," the bayside lodge of W. H. Kearfott about three miles below the town, for a crab feast on the lawn. In the evening Governor Albert C. Ritchie of Maryland and Governor Robert P. Robinson of Delaware spoke, with Congressmen T. Alan Goldsborough and John Philip Hill; G. Walter Mapp, candidate for governor of Virginia, was also on the programme. The invitation had been extended the previous January at Salisbury by Clarence L. Vincent, editor of the Snow Hill Democratic Messenger, and the associations chose Crisfield for 1926.
Two sitting governors, two congressmen and a would-be third governor, on a beach that fifty years earlier had one hotel and no road.
Atlantic HotelMaryland Press AssociationDel-Mar-Via Press AssociationBoard of Trade of Ocean CityAlbert C. RitchieRobert P. RobinsonT. Alan GoldsboroughDr. Charles Washington PurnellW. H. KearfottCharles A. Carter
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1925 · 1925-10-24
Ocean City lobbied hard for the Maryland National Guard's state encampment, offering a farm at $50 an acre six miles from the beach.
Worcester Democrat, 24 October 1925, page one. General Reckord inspected the "Genezer tract" near Sinepuxent, ten feet or more above sea level, "in close reach to the bay or ocean… and can be brought very close to Ocean City, by stone road, which Commissioner Mackall says will be built, and by the B. C. & A. railroad. Besides, the purchase price is quoted at the cheap rate of $50 per acre." The Democrat argued the six or seven miles was no objection since "the resort furnishes all the amusements which are really required in a community such as a soldier camp." "Ocean City's claims for the camp were presented by Mayor W. C. McCabe; Dr. C. W. Purnell, president of Ocean City Chamber of Commerce, and Capt. William B. Powell. Hale Harrison, president of the Berlin Chamber of Commerce, acted as spokesman for the delegation." Salisbury sent its Chamber manager, Senator Charles R. Disharoon and fifty others; Snow Hill sent Mayor W. D. Corddry; Pocomoke sent Edward J. Clarke of the Worcester Democrat; Berlin sent Mayor E. E. Burbage and Gen. H. M. Creel, U.S.A., retired. T. Alan Goldsborough came for Caroline County and spoke for the Ocean City site. Rival sites were on Kent Island and the Choptank River.
The whole lower Shore turned out to sell the Guard a sandy farm, on the argument that the soldiers could go to the beach.
Ocean City Chamber of CommerceMaryland State Roads CommissionBaltimore, Chesapeake & Atlantic RailwayDr. Charles Washington PurnellT. Alan Goldsborough
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1926 · 1926-01-09
The only appearance of the Trimper name in 674 pages: Daniel Trimper named to a Worcester County committee alongside Mayor McCabe.
Worcester Democrat, 9 January 1926, listing a county committee: 'Edgar J. James, D. Lynch, W. W. McCabe, W. B. Powell, Charles Powell, Daniel Trimper, Ocean City.' That is the whole of it. 'Trimper' appears exactly once in the 674-page 1926 corpus, and the amusement park is not mentioned at all — as in 1924. The silence is real but it is mostly the missing Ocean City column: the town has no weekly correspondent in any digitised paper in 1926, and its own attempt to buy one failed in July. 'Luna Park' returns zero hits for the sixth consecutive year.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
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1926 · 1926-08-12
Mayor McCabe welcomes the tri-county temperance women in August and the Shriners in September; the Knights Templar play the Ocean City golf course in May.
The convention trade continues through the rebuilding year. Worcester Democrat, 7 August: 'W. C. T. U. CONVENTION AT OCEAN CITY AUG. 12 — The Fourteenth annual convention of the Woman's Christian Temperance Unions of Worcester, Somerset and Wicomico counties will be held in the Presbyterian Church at Ocean City on Thursday, August 12th. Morning and afternoon sessions, Mrs. J. Coston Goslee, president of the Tri-County W.C.T.U. will preside... The Mayor of Ocean City will welcome the Convention. The State president, Mrs. Mary R. Haslup will be there.' 18 September: 'SHRINERS ASSEMBLE AT OCEAN CITY — The Shriners hooped it up at Ocean City last week-end. They arrived there at three o'clock on Saturday and left on Sunday at 4.30 P. M. A special train conveyed them to the Beach, and their march from the train to the respective hotels was an impressive one... Mayor McCabe welcomed them in a very cordial address.' And in May, the Grand Commandery of Knights Templar of Maryland met at Salisbury with 800 to 1,000 knights and three bands in the parade — the programme put a 'Golf Tournament at Ocean City Golf Course' on the Wednesday afternoon and 'Golf, Ocean City Golf course' again on the Thursday.
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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. PurnellOrlando Harrison
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1927
Ocean City joins a peninsula-wide resorts bureau, and its Board of Trade has a new president.
A Resorts Commission of the Del-Mar-Va Eastern Shore Association, called by chairman State Senator Louis A. Drexler of Delaware, met in early February 1927 and again at The Dennis, Ocean City, on Tuesday 29 March 1927, "for the purpose of taking immediate action on the permanent organization of a Resorts Bureau, to operate in conjunction with the Del-Mar-Va Eastern Shore Association; for the outlining of a cooperative advertising program and to consult with a sub-committee of the Transportation and Communication Division regarding the securing of better railroad transportation to resorts." Twenty-five representative resort men attended. Ocean City's delegation was Mayor W. W. McCabe; F. W. Truitt, president of the Board of Trade; Chas. Ludlum of the Hastings Hotel; and Dr. C. W. Purnell of the Atlantic Hotel. The transportation asks, put to former Senator E. Dale Adkins, chairman of the Transportation Committee, were week-end excursion fares Friday to Monday to both Ocean City and Rehoboth; special week-end trains from Philadelphia and Baltimore from 1 July to 15 September; and ten- to seventeen-day excursion fares from the Pittsburgh territory to Rehoboth and Ocean City, with Pullman cars running through.
Two things fall out of a routine trade-body notice. The Board of Trade still exists under that name in 1927 and its president is no longer Dr. Purnell but F. W. Truitt — Purnell attends as a hotelier, not as the town's spokesman. And the town's growth strategy in 1927 was not local at all: it was a peninsula-wide advertising co-operative asking the Pennsylvania for a Pullman from Pittsburgh.
Board of Trade of Ocean CityDel-Mar-Va Eastern Shore AssociationPennsylvania Railroad CompanyDr. Charles Washington PurnellF. W. TruittLouis A. Drexler
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1929
Five weeks before the Crash, Mayor McCabe puts the summer's net receipts at $1,250,000 and forecasts a winter building boom: a $300,000 boardwalk hotel, a wider boardwalk, a $50,000 Playland and a $115,000 amusement hall on the new pier.
A Delaware weekly of 25 September 1929 printed the whole of what Ocean City meant to build that autumn and winter. Permits were already in at the mayor and council's office for several new summer cottages and one boardwalk hotel costing about $300,000. Thomas H. Conway and Joseph Bryant, owners of the burned Playland, announced a new and larger one at $50,000; the Rapoport Brothers of Philadelphia, whose properties burned, also meant to rebuild, and several smaller places already had. The town planned to rebuild the boardwalk in the amusement section eighteen feet wider, to build a $20,000 bulkhead on the ocean front in north Ocean City near the Catholic Home — a site 'which 50 years ago was the site of an inlet between Ocean City and the Sinepuxent Bay' — and probably to rebuild the sewer system, especially the outlet lines, doing it properly being estimated at $100,000. Also listed: a $2,000 swimming pool at the New Atlantic Hotel, a $5,000 power line to Maridel Beach, $60,000 of new summer cottages, and a $115,000 pier and amusement hall at the shore end of the new pier, to start that fall and be finished for the opening of the 1930 season. Mayor McCabe put the town's net receipts for the summer just ended at $1,250,000.
This is the high-water mark of the boom, and it is dated by the calendar rather than by anything the town did. Read beside the fire of three weeks earlier it is defiance; read beside 29 October it is a list of things about to be tested. Note also the aside about the bulkhead site — an inlet at the north end of Ocean City in about 1879, a claim no other source in this campaign makes.
Ocean City BoardwalkAtlantic HotelOcean City Fishing PierSinepuxent Pier and Improvement CompanyMaridel Beach CityThomas H. ConwayJoseph Bryant
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1930
The Ocean City Beach Patrol is dated to 1930 by every published account — and appears in not one page of the year's contemporary record.
704 pages matching "ocean city" in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and the District were read in full for 1930. The phrase "beach patrol" occurs on exactly one of them, the Milford Chronicle of 25 July, and it means the Rehoboth Beach Patrol Guards under Captain Frederick Homan, demonstrating drowning rescues at a Delaware Safety Council event. "Life guard" occurs once, at Herald Harbor on the Chesapeake. "Lifeguard", "life-guard", "life saver" and "life savers" occur nowhere. A relevance query for "beach patrol" plus "ocean city" over 1929–1931 across all of Chronicling America returns that same single Milford page. No drowning at Ocean City, Md. is reported in any of the 704 pages. The received account — that Mayor W. W. McCabe and Coast Guard Capt. William Purnell organised the patrol in 1930 because the beach had narrowed and bathers had drifted north beyond North Division Street, out of sight of the Coast Guard tower on Caroline Street, and that Edward Lee Carey was hired as the first guard — rests entirely on modern secondary retellings. ⚠ THE NEGATIVE STANDS FOR 1930 AND MUST NOT BE WIDENED. 1932 supplies what 1930 could not: life guards and posted warning flags at Ocean City, Md., in the Evening Star's account of an August 1931 rescue. Recorded so no later pass repeats the search — a corpus-wide query for "beach patrol" with "ocean city" across 1931–1933 returns FOUR pages: Washington Times 20 Aug 1931 p.18, Smyrna Times 3 Feb 1932 p.2, Washington Times 17 Jun 1933 p.8, Washington Daily News 28 Jun 1933 p.6. The Smyrna Times page was read and is the NATIONAL GUARD's beach patrol at Bethany Beach, not Ocean City's. THE OTHER THREE ARE UNREAD and are the cheapest outstanding lead on this question in the whole campaign. ADD: the same silence holds through 1931. Across all 699 pages of the 1931 Ocean City corpus, 'beach patrol', 'life guard', 'lifeguard' and 'life saver' occur on eight pages and NOT ONE is Ocean City, Maryland. ADD, and close the lead: the Washington Times of 20 August 1931, p.18 — logged by the 1932 pass as one of three unread 'beach patrol' pages — is 'Girls Bring Trouble For 2 Life Guards', datelined OCEAN CITY, N. J., about two members of the Ocean City (New Jersey) Beach Patrol suspended for letting girls sit on their stands. ADD the one 1931 surf rescue that does appear: a 14-year-old Washington Boy Scout, Robert P. Harbaugh, swam out and brought a drowning woman ashore at Ocean City, Md. in early August 1931 (Evening Star, 8 August). No guard is mentioned.
The campaign asked 1930 to source its most famous institution and 1930 declined. Worse for the received story: the one contemporary description of the beach that year says the opposite of its premise. The Washington Daily News of 18 June 1930 reports under its own subheading that "the bathing beach has been widened, and now has shallow ocean waters for a long distance, average bathing temperatures, and few dangers from undertow." That is not proof the founding story is wrong — promotional copy would say that whatever the sand was doing — but it is the only contemporary evidence either way, and it points the other way. Note also that Elisha Victor Bunting was already "a member of the Ocean City guard" in 1927, so whatever happened in 1930 was very likely a formalisation rather than an invention.
Ocean City Beach PatrolCapt. William I. PurnellElisha Victor Bunting
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1930 · 1930-04-07
Twenty-nine federal prisoners serve their sentences inside Ocean City's own municipal hall, marched to the Del-Mar-Va Hotel for meals, while the mayor petitions for their parole.
Washington Times, 7 April 1930, datelined Ocean City: "families of some of the 29 Federal prisoners at this resort held in connection with the recent Ocean City rum smuggling case are facing starvation and want, with little prospect of improvement. A new effort is being made to have a leniency parole granted by Judge Morris A. Soper… Mayor William W. McCabe, of Ocean City, today stated. Some of the Ocean City men, held on sentences ranging from two to six months, have families of from five to eight children… All of the 29 men are being kept at the Ocean City municipal hall. The local jail is insufficient to accommodate them. For the past week the prisoners have marched to the Del-Mar-Va Hotel for meals. During the day the prisoners play cards, sing and amuse themselves as best they can. A radio, installed in the municipal building, helps pass the dull moments away." McCabe argued for a daytime parole "to allow them opportunity to make livelihood for their families, spending the nights under lock and key."
This is the only view of Ocean City's town government the whole 1930 corpus gives, and it is of the mayor lobbying a federal judge on behalf of twenty-nine convicted smugglers who are being held in his own town hall and fed at a hotel. In the first full year of the Depression, the mayor's stated reason is that their children are going hungry.
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1930 · 1930-04-24
Ocean City's mayor is floated for the Maryland Senate — "and then Mayor Bill McCabe, of Ocean City, may get into it and cause complications."
The Republican, Oakland, Md., 24 April 1930, in a weekly Annapolis political column: "In Worcester county Senator Crockett has announced his intention to retire and Milton L. Veasey, from the same town of Pocomoke, is in the field for the Senate to compete with Horace Davis of Berlin. Worcester is such a strongly Democratic county that a nomination is usually equivalent to an election, so we may expect a hard battle — and then Mayor Bill McCabe, of Ocean City, may get into it and cause complications." Horace Davis of Berlin was in the same months serving with McCabe on the Del-Mar-Va Eastern Shore Association's Worcester County board of governors. Nothing in the 704 pages read says McCabe entered the race or what the September primary decided.
The only piece of Ocean City politics the entire 1930 corpus contains, and it is a Garrett County paper at the far western end of the state gossiping about the Worcester Senate seat. It also tells you what McCabe was by 1930: not a resort mayor but a man whose entry into a state race would 'cause complications'.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1930 · 1930-06-18
"For Further Information Write MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL, Ocean City, Md." — the town buys its own display advertisement in a Washington daily.
Washington Daily News resort section, 18 June 1930: "Ocean City Maryland — 'Maryland's Only Seashore Resort' — Bathing — Sailing — Canoeing — Motor Boating — Dancing — Golf — Tennis — Deep Sea Fishing Pier — Three Mile Boardwalk — Hotels and Cottages. For Further Information Write MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL, Ocean City, Md." Beside it the Atlantic Hotel advertised "A well appointed Hotel with excellent service — Sun Deck, Local and Long Distance phones in all rooms. Dancing — near deep sea fishing pier and amusements. DR. C. W. PURNELL, Directing Manager."
In 1928 not one of 510 pages mentioned Ocean City's government in any form. In 1930 the government is buying space in a Washington paper under its own name and calling the place Maryland's only seashore resort. And the same page that says the boardwalk is 'nearly two miles' long carries the town's own claim of three.
Ocean City BoardwalkAtlantic HotelDr. Charles Washington Purnell
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1930 · 1930-07-01
The mayor and city council announce scheduled aeroplane passenger service from Ocean City to Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Wilmington from 1 July 1930.
Washington Times, 28 June 1930, datelined Ocean City, Md.: "Air Service From D.C. To Ocean City Nears — The mayor and city council have announced that airplane passenger service between Ocean City and Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Wilmington will be inaugurated July 1. No fixed schedule will be followed, the announcement stated. John M. Bounds, of Willow Grove, Pa., licensed pilot, has two planes at the Ocean City Airport here to be used in the proposed air lines." A separate Washington Daily News feature ten days earlier records "an airport, established in 1928" as one of the town's boasts.
1928 gave the campaign a Philadelphia company's paper scheme for a Norfolk–Ocean City–Atlantic City air route flying out of Hebron, Maryland, and nothing that said it flew. 1930 has an airport in the town itself, two aeroplanes on it, a named pilot, a start date, and the town council doing the announcing. Whether anybody bought a ticket is another matter — 'no fixed schedule will be followed' is doing a great deal of work in that sentence.
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1930 · 1930-07-15
"The convention resort": seven state and regional bodies meet at Ocean City in 1930, and Mayor McCabe welcomes the Maryland druggists with Governor Ritchie closing the session.
Documented in the 1930 corpus: the 95th annual session of the Improved Order of Red Men, 23–24 April, at which Mrs. Florence Abernathy of Cherry Hill was elected Great Pocahontas of the Ladies' Branch (Midland Journal, 2 May); the Maryland Pharmaceutical Association in convention with the Delaware Pharmaceutical Society in late June, where "Mayor William W. McCabe of Ocean City gave an address of welcome to the state druggists at the opening session" and Governor Ritchie addressed the members at the close (Smyrna Times, 2 July); the Maryland State Teachers' Association, whose sessions drew the Garrett County superintendent (The Republican, Oakland, 3 July); the Automobile Trade Association of Maryland, 14–15 July, headquarters the Hotel Atlantic, "more than 350 visitors… among them Gov. Ritchie" (Washington Daily News, 8 July); the fifth annual convention of the Eastern Shore of Maryland Association of Optometrists, 21 August, with delegates from Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and the District (Washington Times, 21 August); the Del-Mar-Va Eastern Shore Association, whose Worcester County governors for the year were named on 1 July as including W. W. McCabe, Dr. C. W. Purnell and Frank W. Pruitt, all of Ocean City (Peninsula Enterprise, 5 July); and the Maryland State Council of the Izaak Walton League, meeting 19 September to elect officers and adopt a constitution (Evening Star, 7 September). In December the Community Fire Company of Rising Sun elected five delegates and five alternates to the Maryland State Firemen's convention, "which meets at Ocean City" — booked for 8–10 July 1931, "one month later than usual."
1928's draft called the convention trade 'the year's quiet economy'. In 1930 it is not quiet: it is the thing the town's own advertising leads with, and the mayor's job in July is standing up to welcome druggists.
Atlantic HotelDel-Mar-Va Eastern Shore AssociationMaryland Pharmaceutical AssociationState Teachers' Association of MarylandOcean City Volunteer Fire DepartmentDr. Charles Washington Purnell
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1930 · 1930-11-30
Mayor McCabe's father — William Robbins McCabe, Speaker of the Delaware House and founder of the Selbyville Bank — dies suddenly at Selbyville, aged 71.
Smyrna Times, 3 December 1930, and Milford Chronicle, 5 December: "William Robbins McCabe, 71 years old, retired banker, merchant and former Speaker of the Delaware House of Representatives, who died suddenly Sunday evening from paralysis, was buried in the Red Men's Cemetery… Born on June 25, 1859, the son of the late William S. and Martha Davis McCabe, at Selbyville… From 1876 until 1900, Mr. McCabe was engaged in the mercantile business at Selbyville. Elected by popular vote to the State Legislature in 1883, the first Democrat elected from Baltimore hundred in 30 years, Mr. McCabe served until 1885. He was re-elected and during the next two years was Speaker of the House of the Delaware General Assembly. For four years he served as State Insurance and Banking Commissioner… In 1888 he married Miss Beulah Whaley, of Whaleyville, Md.… Mr. McCabe founded the Selbyville Bank in 1903 and was elected its first president. Besides his wife he leaves five children, Mayor William W. McCabe, of Ocean City, Md.; Thomas B. McCabe, president of Scott Paper Company, Chester, Pa.; Mrs. Karl Thieme, Washington, D.C.; Mrs. William Minton Harvey, Swarthmore, Pa.; and Miss Maud McCabe, Selbyville."
The campaign has held William W. McCabe for years as a name on the Maryland Manual's mayors list with a bio built out of the 1933 inlet. This obituary of his father gives him a family: Selbyville, Delaware, a mother from Whaleyville, a father who was Speaker of the Delaware House and founded the town bank, and a brother running the Scott Paper Company. Ocean City's mayor through the fire, the pier and the inlet was not a Worcester County man by origin at all.
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1931 · 1931-06-23
"Almost everybody in this city, including Mayor William McCabe, the chief of police and members of the town council, are fishing today."
Washington Times, 23 June 1931, datelined Ocean City: "ANGLERS FLOCK TO BAY CITY... And predictions are that if today's catch is as large as those of the past 10 days all inhabitants and visitors will be out with the hook and line tomorrow... Channel bass are biting better here than ever before in history, while blue fish, king fish and trout fairly fight each other to get on the hook. Mayor McCabe basked today under his laurels as the city's champion fisherman. During the past 10 days he has hooked 18 channel bass, all whoppers... The bass weigh between 25 and 50 pounds." The Evening Star's "Rod and Stream" column ran Ocean City reports all summer: on 21 June from JAMES D. JARMAN of Ocean City, Md. ("Dr. Berman went out last night and in about an hour caught 12 kingfish right in front of our hotel"); on 26 June, "The mayor, the town council, its secretary, the chief of police, most of the proprietors of the hotels and their guests are reported to be engaged in fishing"; and on 19 June a telegram "from Ocean City, Md., from the CHAMBER OF COMMERCE" — "Parties of 15 catching at rate of 30 a day."
Two years before the inlet, the fishery that made the town's modern reputation is already the thing Washington is told about — and the town is organised enough to wire the fishing report to a metropolitan daily under the Chamber of Commerce's name. It is also, incidentally, the only glimpse 1931 gives of Ocean City's government: a mayor, a council, a council secretary and a police chief, none of them named except McCabe, all of them out after channel bass.
Ocean City Chamber of CommerceJames D. Jarman
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1932 · 1932-04-11
Mayor McCabe's Sinepuxent Bay plantation is laid out as a new resort at Henry's Grove, with the county commissioners paying for the roads.
Smyrna Times, 13 April 1932, page 3: "NEW RESORT NEAR BERLIN — Henry's Grove on Sinepuxent Bay is Being Developed for Pleasure. Development of a new Sinepuxent Bay resort in Worcester County, Md., will get under way this month at Henry's Grove, seven miles southeast of Berlin, Md., it was learned Monday. Henry's Grove, located on the old Henry plantation, is owned by Mayor William M. McCabe, of Ocean City, who purchased the property years ago from Harrison's Nurseries Inc., of Berlin. During the past winter the Worcester County Commissioners have expended funds to improve the highways to the site. Under Mayor McCabe's supervision, streets are being surveyed, preparatory to development... The ancient mansion at Henry's Grove is historically famous, having been bombarded by British warships during the war of 1812."
In the Depression's worst year the mayor of Ocean City was subdividing his own bayshore plantation seven miles away, with county money going into the roads to it. Read beside Maridel Beach City — the mile-north land boom that had shrunk to a $5,000 power-line item by 1929 and appears nowhere in the 1932 record — this is the Worcester County land trade still trying, and trying on the bay rather than the ocean. The initial is printed as 'M' and is wrong; the mayor is William W. McCabe.
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1932 · 1932-08-24
Fifteen hundred Legionnaires come to Ocean City in the Depression's worst summer, and argue about the Bonus Army.
Washington Times, 25 August 1932, page 14, datelined Ocean City: "LEGION SESSION DRAWS 1,500 TO OCEAN CITY — Maryland Convention to Debate Disability Pay, Bonus, And B. E. F. Ouster. OCEAN CITY, Md., Aug. 25 — Welcomed by Mayor W. W. McCabe, the Maryland department of the American Legion has its annual State convention in full swing, with practically 1,500 members attending. The convention will last through Saturday. A resolution which was to be presented for action today would pledge members to ask 'only for the necessary relief for disabled veterans and their dependents,' and discouraging appropriations 'for any other purpose.'... A parade of drum and bugle corps is set for tomorrow, and tomorrow night Maj. Gen. Paul B. Malone, commander of the Third Corps Area, will speak at the annual banquet. Discussion and possible action on the eviction of the bonus army from Washington, immediate payment of the bonus, and prohibition, also are on the convention program." The convention ran 24–27 August with a Ladies' Auxiliary convention alongside; the Evening Star of 4 September reports that Maj. Gen. Milton A. Reckard, commandant of the Maryland National Guard, was unanimously elected State commander there. The Maryland State Funeral Directors' Association held its thirteenth annual convention at Ocean City on 31 August–1 September with about 200 attending, George L. Schwab of Baltimore presiding.
Fifteen hundred people in a town of 946, seven weeks after the Army cleared the Bonus Expeditionary Force out of Washington with cavalry and tear gas — and the eviction is on the agenda. The 1930 draft said the convention trade was what the town led with; in 1932 it is what the town has left. Note the mayor: W. W. McCabe is the only Ocean City officer named in the entire year's record, and once again he is doing the welcoming.
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1933
Mayor McCabe asked Washington for an inlet in June — the ocean dug it for him in August
The Inlet was McCabe's project before it was the storm's. By June 1933 Mayor William W. McCabe was pushing a proposed $781,000 inlet project through President Roosevelt's public-works program, in direct contact with the War Department's Baltimore engineer — and the town had asked the Public Works Administration for an $800,000 allotment, on top of a $500,000 Maryland appropriation dating to 1931. When the August hurricane cut the channel naturally, McCabe pivoted within days to demanding jetty funds to hold it open, arguing prompt action would save money. The gamble remade the town: a protected harbor, a commercial fishing fleet, and the sport-fishing industry that named OC the White Marlin Capital of the World. BOTH ENDS RECOVERED, 2026-08-10. It did not start in June. In FEBRUARY 1933 McCabe was told that Congress, contrary to report, would NOT act on the $250,000 inlet bill on which Maryland's conditional $500,000 depended; by September the project "seemed to have been a dead issue." And the June story carries the detail that most changes its meaning: the $781,000 project was still to be built FIVE MILES SOUTH of the town, with a single-track railway laid down the beach to haul the stone. Then the ocean cut at the town instead — and on 14 September the PWA allotted $281,000, with Goldsborough wiring on the 20th that the President had approved it. THE ENGINEERS' PREFERRED SITE IS NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN.
Source · checked 2026-08-05
1933 · 1933-02-10
February: Congress will not act on the $250,000 inlet bill, and the whole project stalls
Everything the town had won in Washington in 1932 came to nothing in February 1933. 'Mayor William W. McCabe, of Ocean City, Friday, received word that the present session of Congress, contrary to report, will not take action on the Ocean City $250,000 Inlet bill to aid the fishing industry of that section. The State of Maryland has appropriated $500,000 dependent upon a Federal appropriation of $250,000.' Maryland's money had been voted in 1931 and was conditional; without the federal quarter-million it could not be spent. By September the Smyrna Times could write that the project 'seemed to have been a dead issue.'
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1933 · 1933-06-07
As late as June the plan was still to build the inlet five miles south — with a railway down the beach to haul the stone
The best proof that the engineers' preferred site survived into 1933 is a construction detail. Smyrna Times, 7 June: 'Construction of a single-track railroad line from Ocean City southward five miles down the Worcester County coastal peninsula, over which heavy materials to be used in building the proposed $781,000 Ocean City Inlet will be hauled, will be undertaken immediately following the passage by the United States Senate of President Roosevelt's public works bill, Mayor William W. McCabe said last week. Mayor McCabe added that he was in constant communication with Col. E. J. [Dent], War Department Engineer of Baltimore, under whose supervision the proposed inlet may be built, and that the beach railway line had already been approved by United States engineers.' Ten weeks later the ocean cut the inlet at the town instead, and the beach railway was never built.
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1933 · 1933-10-04
October: thirteen of fourteen owners sold; the fourteenth was a minister with sixty lots under water
The right of way for the inlet works had to be bought from the people whose lots the ocean had taken. 'Thirteen of the fourteen property owners involved in the right of way proceedings have now agreed to sell their holdings to the government, Mayor McCabe announced. The one stumbling block… Rev. W. C. Po[o]le, of Hebron, Md.' Poole had offered to trade his sixty lots for sixty elsewhere in Ocean City and been refused; he had paid $9,200 for them a few years earlier and the government was offering about $2,500. Condemnation proceedings in the United States District Court were to be started at once, McCabe said as head of the Waterfront Commission. The same column notes, in one plain line, who was doing the first work of all: 'Ocean City coast guards placed telephone cables across the floor of the natural inlet.'
Ocean City Inlet & JettyRev. W. C. Poole
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1933 · 1933-10-11
The Chamber of Commerce asked the War Department to call it the McCabe Inlet
In special session at Ocean City the Chamber of Commerce voted resolutions urging that the $781,000 inlet, on completion, 'be dedicat[ed as the] McCabe Inlet, in hono[r of Mayor] William W. McCabe', and forwarded them to the War Department in Washington. The honour was proposed for his work as citizen, as mayor, and as head of the Maryland Waterfront Commission. The same meeting voted to set aside a day off the actual work for a dedication in the latter part of October, with War Department and peninsula notables as guests. The War Department did not oblige: the channel has been the Ocean City Inlet ever since.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Ocean City Inlet & JettyOcean City Chamber of Commerce
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1933 · 1933-10-11
The storm took the railroad bridge; on 11 October the railway applied to give up passenger service, and the town did not object
This is the end of the train era, and it is documented step by step. The Pennsylvania Railroad bridge across Sinepuxent Bay 'disappeared beneath giant waves' at five o'clock on the afternoon of 23 August. Two months later, from the Smyrna Times of 25 October: 'Civic organizations of Ocean City, Md., said last week they would not oppose an application filed October 11 with the Maryland Public Service Commission seeking discontinuance of passenger train service on the Baltimore and Eastern Railroad line between Easton and that Maryland resort… Since the storm on August 23, the railroad company has completely abandoned passenger train service to Ocean City, Md. The storm washed away the Ocean City railroad span across Sinepuxent Bay, marooning several freight cars at this resort. To rebuild the bay bridge would cost around $90,000 the railroad company estimates. Construction of a temporary freight station across the harbor on the Worcester County mainland at present takes care of freight service to this resort, coupled with the Pennsylvania Railroad freight truck service.' Mayor McCabe said any attempt to abandon *freight* service would be vigorously opposed. Local opinion held that passenger service had been running at a huge loss for years because of the buses. So the trains did not simply stop: the bridge was not worth $90,000 to a railway whose passengers had already gone to the road, and the town agreed. — 1934 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: On 17 July 1934 the council granted a permit for a Tri-State Oil Co. filling station 'on R R lots'. Eleven months after the railway applied to abandon passenger service, its ground in the town was being licensed for petrol — the first documented reuse of railroad land at Ocean City and a concrete terminus for the fact's claim that the trains never came back.
Train Depot SiteBaltimore & Eastern Railroad CompanyPublic Service Commission of Maryland
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1933 · 1933-11-08
Maridel Beach reappears — as the point where Maryland's coastal highway stopped in 1927 and stayed stopped
After four researched years of silence, the Maridel Beach City development surfaces in a Delaware account of the coastal boulevard: 'In 1927 Worcester County, Maryland, advocates of the boulevard brought about the construction of two miles of concrete highway from Ocean City northward toward the Delaware line to Maridel Beach, the name given a new ocean front development… and [Maryland] has made no addition' since. Delaware had by 1933 surveyed and bought right of way to carry its own boulevard six miles south from Bethany Beach to the state line at Fenwick Island; Maryland had six miles left to build, at around $90,000, and the storm made it urgent — 'the need for another highway outlet from Ocean City, Md., has made the matter an emergency one.' Mayor McCabe, who was chairman of the Maryland Waterfront Commission, had said in February that the state stood ready to spend $100,000 on its share out of Worcester County's post-lateral highway allotment from the gas tax.
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1934 · 1934-01-31
In January the mayor wrote to fourteen hundred fishing-boat owners from Massachusetts to the Carolinas to tell them Maryland now had a seaport
The Smyrna Times of 31 January 1934 carried it under 'OCEAN CITY TO BE A PORT NOW / Notify 1400 Fishing Vessels About Harbor and Shipping Point There / STORM OPENED INLET': 'Fourteen hundred boat owners, members of deep sea fishing fleets that operate along the Atlantic coast between Massachusetts and the Carolinas have been notified of the existence of a seaport in Maryland, born here as a result of the Ocean City Inlet which was open by a storm last August 23, by Mayor William W. McCabe. The new seaport at Ocean City, Md., providing access to an inland harbor through the natural beach inlet, is ten to twenty hours nearer the great fishing banks along the Del-Mar-Va coast than can be found elsewhere, it is declared... the State and Federal government is now spending $781,000 on jetties and bulwarks so as to make the natural inlet there a permanent opening. Ocean City interests are carrying on plans calling for harbor construction projects, including piers and shipping platforms for the future accommodation of ocean fishing vessels desirous of making Ocean City a shipping base for their cargoes.' Five months later the AP would report the town's policy as discouraging the same fleet until the channel was finished — the January letter was an advertisement for a port that did not yet exist. — 1934 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: Provenance repaired. The fact carried a Chronicling America collection-query URL plus an LCCN, date, printed page and reel-level ALTO file number, with a note reading 'THE MERGE MUST RESOLVE A REAL PAGE URL BEFORE PUBLISHING.' It now has one: https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn84020422/1934-01-31/ed-1/?sp=2 — HTTP-verified 200. sp=2 confirmed equal to printed page 2; sole matching page in that issue.
The inlet's first act of commerce was a mailing list. McCabe had spent 1933 asking Washington for a channel; in January 1934 he was cold-calling the entire Atlantic fishing fleet about the one the weather gave him.
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1934 · 1934-06-19
'The town is talking': two hundred pounds of Ocean City bluefish went to Baltimore by aeroplane, the first fish ever shipped by air from the town
The Associated Press filed it from Ocean City on 19 June 1934 and the Salisbury Times ran it on page one under 'BALTIMOREANS TO EAT FLYING FISH': 'Ocean City, June 19 (AP) — Ocean City is all agog over the "flying bluefish." The town is talking because it is the first shipment of bluefish to be made by air. Two hundred pounds of fresh-caught bluefish, packed in ice, were taken on a light truck to Salisbury and placed on the regular Chesapeake Bay Air Ferries plane for Baltimore, where some of them will be served for luncheon.' The fish were 'a gift to the [Baltimore] clubs from the Ocean City Chamber of Commerce, and are being sent to the two luncheons because Mayor W. W. McCabe and A. R. Holcombe, local editor, will be guests of honor.' The next morning's paper added that the fish 'were brought here by truck from Ocean City and loaded at the local airport aboard the regular morning plane for Baltimore.'
Ten months after a hurricane cut the inlet, the town's problem was no longer catching fish but being famous for them. So the Chamber of Commerce put two hundred pounds of bluefish on a scheduled airliner and sent the mayor after them.
Ocean City Inlet & JettyOcean City Chamber of Commerce
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1934 · 1934-08-06
Twelve years of Mayor McCabe ended in an uncontested election: four names, seventy-five votes each
The council gave notice on 17 July 1934 of a nominating meeting in the State School Building on Wednesday 25 July at 8:30, 'for purpose of nominating Mayor & three Councilmen for to be elected Aug 6th for term of two years.' On 31 July the secretary was ordered to have ballots printed and judges arranged for polling from 2 to 6 p.m. on 6 August. On 7 August the secretary reported the result: 'Thomas W. Elliott for Mayor 75 votes; Dr. F. J. Townsend for Council 75; Preston Laws 75; William H. Scott 75.' Four candidates, four seats, an identical count for each — a nominating meeting that produced a single slate. The judges of election were Stephen J. Quillin, Joseph Elliott and Thomas Savage. William C. McCabe, mayor since 1922 and the man who had spent 1933 lobbying Washington for an inlet, does not appear on the ballot; he chaired his last meetings through August and served, in his own secretary's phrase, 'to Sept 1934'. The new officials were sworn in by Magistrate Hall at four o'clock on the afternoon of Monday 10 September and met at 7:30 that evening to organise.
The mayor who had the inlet handed to him by a hurricane left office eleven months later without a contest — and without, in the minutes, a single word of thanks recorded.
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1934 · 1934-12-24
The town secretary sat down and wrote out every mayor Ocean City had ever had — 1892 to 1934, on one page
On 24 December 1934, on Mayor and Council letterhead, secretary and treasurer J. M. Mumford typed a circular beginning: 'I occasionly have an inquiry as to who had served our city as Mayor and their election. So thinking probally others might be interested I have carefully gone over our old records and listed the names and years each served.' What follows is the town's own succession list: three commissioners elected 2 May 1892 — John F. Waggamon, William C. Franklin and William B. Wilson, with Wilson president of the board and Franklin secretary-treasurer; then Wilson elected mayor 7 May 1894; George M. Upshur 1 May 1896; James Z. Powell 1 August 1898; Clayton J. Purnell 6 August 1900; John F. Waggamon 1902, 'Resigned Oct. 20th 1903 remainder of term filled by Capt. Cristropher Ludlam'; Ludlam 1904 and 1906; W. Lee Carey 3 August 1908 and 1 August 1910; William B. S. Powell 1912 and 3 August 1914; Capt. John B. Jones 7 August 1916; Edward M. Scott 5 August 1918; E. E. Collins 2 August 1920; 'William C. McCabe served to Sept 1934'; and 'Aug. 6th 1934 William T. Elliott, 2 years.' The document survives because Mumford filed a copy in the minute book, where it sits as the last item of the 1934 record.
The most useful thing in the 1934 minute book is not a decision at all. It is a clerk answering the same question often enough that he finally wrote the answer down — and in doing so he left the campaign a primary-source succession list for forty-two years of a town whose own books were supposed to have been mutilated in 1896.
John M. MumfordClayton J. PurnellW. Lee CareyWilliam B. S. PowellEdward M. ScottElbridge E. CollinsJames Z. PowellJohn F. Waggaman
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1935 · 1935-04-01
Ocean City had one of Worcester's three delegates in the 1935 session — and its former mayor sat on the state's shore-erosion commission
The Maryland Manual for 1935 gives the men who carried Ocean City's business through the session that ran from 2 January to 1 April 1935. Worcester County returned one senator, Milton L. Veasey of Pocomoke City, and three delegates: Samuel B. Brimer of Stockton, Clarence E. Robertson of Pocomoke City, and Ralph R. Dennis of Ocean City — all Democrats. The county commissioners were Charles L. Mason, Samuel E. Shockley and Thomas Y. Franklin, all with terms expiring in 1938; Thomas F. Johnson was State's Attorney, and Ernest C. West was Sheriff — the two men who between them ordered and led the boardwalk slot-machine raid of 23 August. And on page 107, among the members of the Maryland Water Front Commission created by Chapter 522 of the Acts of 1929, under the heading “Eastern Shore”: “Mayor William W. McCabe, Ocean City (1939).” McCabe had been voted out of the mayoralty in 1934 after twelve years, but he was still sitting on the state body for shore erosion, with a term running to 1939, alongside a State Roads commissioner. The Manual carries no municipal roster of any kind — there is no listing of any Maryland town's mayor and council in the volume — so Ocean City's own officers appear in it only through him. — 1936 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The Maryland Manual for 1936 names the delegation that sat through 1935-1937: Samuel E. Brimer of Stockton, Ralph R. Dennis of Ocean City and Clarence E. Robertson of Pocomoke City in the House, with Milton L. Veasey of Pocomoke City in the Senate. Maryland held no regular session in 1936 but two special ones, 4 March to 2 April and 8 to 12 December.
Maryland Waterfront CommissionCounty Commissioners of Worcester CountyRalph R. Dennis
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1936 · 1936-06-25
The published price of the Ocean City inlet in 1936 was $781,000
The Democratic Messenger's summer resort feature of 25 June 1936 printed an aerial photograph of the inlet channel under the headline 'Inlet Big Attraction at Ocean City' and stated the sum plainly: 'Scores of boats, principally fishing craft, are now finding a harbor at Ocean City, as a result of the Ocean City Inlet, built by the Federal and State Governments at a cost of $781,000. Fishing fleets in the ocean are finding Ocean City a port of shipping for their cargoes, as a result of the Inlet waterway.' It is the same figure Mayor W. W. McCabe had been pushing through Roosevelt's public-works bill in June 1933, two months before the storm cut the channel for nothing. — 1937 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: The county's figure held into 1937 and drifted: the Democratic Messenger printed 'the $781,000 Inlet at Ocean City' on 8 July 1937 and 'at a cost of $783,000' in its fourth-anniversary retrospective of 26 August 1937. The gap against the Corps' $966,689.73 is now explained rather than merely noted: of that federal total, $500,000 was CONTRIBUTED FUNDS — the State of Maryland's own money — against $283,007.93 of Public Works funds, $67,185.09 of Emergency Relief funds and $116,496.71 of regular maintenance funds. The county papers were counting a different pot.
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1936 · 1936-07-04
State police counted seven thousand cars into Ocean City on 4 July 1936 in nine hours, and the former mayor put the weekend at ninety thousand people
'Over 7,000 automobiles entered Ocean City last Saturday, July 4th, between 8 A. M. and 5 P. M., according to actual count made by State Police at the Ocean City harbor bridge,' the Messenger reported on 9 July 1936. 'It is estimated that 3,000 additional cars entered the resort Saturday evening. Former Mayor William W. McCabe of Ocean City estimated that between 80,000 and 90,000 persons visited Ocean City over the week end. He calculated they spent something like $200,000.' It is a hard counted number - one bridge, one gate, one day - for a town whose entire electorate the following month was forty-eight votes.
Ten thousand cars in a day into a town that could poll forty-eight voters. The whole modern problem of Ocean City is already fully formed in July 1936, and it was the state police who were counting it.
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1937 · 1937-10-20
The Corps of Engineers came to the Ocean City Municipal Building to hear the case for a canal to Chincoteague — the missing link between Miami and New York
On 20 October 1937 at 9.30 in the morning, in Ocean City's Municipal Building, Col. W. A. Johnson of the Corps of Engineers held a hearing on an inland waterway running from Ocean City south into Chincoteague Bay, put by its advocates as 'a missing link in the intracoastal waterway connecting Miami and New York'. Shippers representing about two hundred vessels petitioned for it; the proposal was to widen the existing channel to fifty or a hundred feet and deepen it to about seven feet. It was the same argument Mayor McCabe had made in Snow Hill years before, when he 'told us reasons for the desirability of the Inlet as a part of a chain of inland waterways from Ocean City to Florida', and which the War Department engineers had then reported against. Two months earlier Col. E. J. Dent, the district engineer who had been in charge of the Ocean City harbour and inlet projects since the 1933 storm cut the inlet through, had retired from active service. The authority was fresh: Congressman T. Alan Goldsborough had 'secured in the River and Harbor Act of August 26, 1937, authorization for a preliminary examination and survey' of three proposed waterways, of which this was the first. At the hearing itself, the Worcester Democrat reported, the case was 'for an inland water-way from the Sinepuxent Bay to Cape Charles; as furnishing the most direct, safest and most pleasant route from New York to Miami. To accomplish this, the channel already connecting the Bay and Ocean would have to be deepened and widened to allow unimpeded navigation.' Petitions came from the Norfolk Chamber of Commerce, the Hampton Roads Marine Exchange and the American Powerboat Association; Mayor J. W. Winder of Chincoteague and former Mayor W. W. McCabe of Ocean City were among those who testified. A Snow Hill editorial in May had put the argument in one sentence: yachts and small commercial vessels 'have no other inlet on the ocean side to go into in stormy weather, after they leave Ocean City, until they arrive at the capes, a matter of about 125 miles.'
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1973 · 1973-01-17
William H. 'Barney' McCabe, sixteen years an Ocean City councilman and owner of the McCabe Apartment Hotel on the boardwalk, had died on 9 December at 62
"OCEAN CITY - William H. (Barney) McCabe, 62, a former Ocean City town councilman for the past 16 years, died December 9 in Peninsula General Hospital after a short illness. He formerly owned and operated the McCabe Apartment Hotel on the boardwalk. Born in Salisbury, he was a son of the late W. W. and Harriet Tilghman McCabe. Mr. McCabe was a member of the St. Paul-By-The-Sea Episcopal Church." Survived by his wife Margaret and a daughter; funeral at St. Paul's with the Rev. William L. Dewees; interment in Parsons Cemetery, Salisbury. The obituary ran on 17 January 1973, five weeks after the death. His father, W. W. McCabe, was the mayor who got the inlet.
Source · checked 2026-09-10