History · 1935–2025
No, And Then Yes: gambling in Ocean City, 1935–2011
Ocean City refused gambling for seventy years and then accepted it, and the refusal was never really moral - it was a judgment about what kind of customer the town wanted, held so long that reversing it took a decade of watching the money go somewhere else. The thread's shape is a reversal, and the reversal is the point.
The machines were here first. Twenty-one boardwalk establishments were raided in a single month in 1935 and the slot machines thrown into the Pocomoke; the town's own delegate asked the 1936 legislature to tax the games instead; bingo was priced at $500 a season in 1939 and then cut. Ocean City ordered every slot machine and gambling device out of the town in August 1946 - at a meeting that does not exist in the town's own published record - and a casino operator threatened an injunction. The county spent 1947 to 1959 trying to tax and then licence what it could not stop. Then in January 1976, five months before Atlantic City's voters legalised casinos, Kelley told a Prince George's delegate to keep his casinos in his own bailiwick and got a unanimous council behind him; by 1980 a zoning commissioner was asking a bus operator whether she was still running vans to Atlantic City's. The refusal held for thirty-two years, down to stopping a pensioners' club splitting a 50-50 pot in 2000 - and ended six to one in 2008. The Casino at Ocean Downs opened in 2011.
The received story is that Ocean City is a family resort that said no to gambling. The record says it said no for a specific and self-interested reason, kept saying it while its own visitors were bussed up the coast to spend the money elsewhere, and then said yes when the alternative was watching a Maryland casino open eight miles inland anyway. Both answers were about the same thing: which customer walks the boardwalk.
7 beats · 19 dated facts · 3 open questions
The arc
1935–1939
Thrown in the Pocomoke, then taxed, then priced
The first instinct was enforcement and it did not last. Twenty-one boardwalk establishments were raided in one month in 1935 and the slot machines thrown into the Pocomoke River. Within a year the town's own delegate had asked the 1936 legislature to tax the games instead - the beginning of a sixty-year oscillation between prohibiting a trade and pricing it. By 1939 Ocean City had put a price on thirty-five kinds of business and set bingo at $500 a season, then cut it in July when the number proved too high for the market. **Prohibition, taxation and licensing are all present before the war, and the town uses whichever is convenient.**
1935 on the timeline1936 on the timeline1939 on the timeline
1946 · pivotal
Ordered out, at a meeting that does not exist
In August 1946 the council ordered every slot machine and gambling device out of Ocean City, moved on to study banning bingo even where the prizes were merchandise rather than cash, and was met with a threat of injunction proceedings in the Worcester County Circuit Court from a casino operator named Alexander W. Jackson. **None of it is in the town's own record.** The Associated Press reported the Saturday action and the Monday follow-up; the IQM2 calendar carries no meeting between 5 and 27 August, and the list of minutes the council itself approved on 9 September names one sitting that has no document at all. The largest single piece of 1946 Ocean City business is known only because a wire service was in the room.
1947–1959
The county tries to tax it, and ends by licensing it
Worcester spent twelve years failing to settle the same question. The Governor vetoed the county's slot-machine tax in 1947 as inconsistent; the Legislature passed it again as Senate Bill 521 in 1949; there were $1,000 fines in 1951, a boardwalk raid on the operator of "Fascination" the same year, and $3,000 of whiskey-raid fines in 1956. It ends not in prohibition but in a licence: in March 1959 Senator John L. Sanford, Jr. introduced a bill to license all pinball machines in Worcester County, alongside vending bills, with beer and wine fees to be set at not less than $50 nor more than $250 annually. **Twelve years of enforcement resolved into a fee schedule.**
1947 on the timeline1949 on the timeline1951 on the timeline1959 on the timeline
1975–1976 · pivotal
"Stay the hell out of Ocean City"
In December 1975, a year before Atlantic City's voters chose casinos, Kelley reported to the council on a television documentary about it and drew the lesson that governed the next three decades: "They are tearing down their big hotels and the reason is because the politicians up there are being crooked, the Police have been crooked and nobody cares … you can kill your town quick and that's just what happened to Atlantic City." Five weeks later the answer came in the least diplomatic passage in fifty years of these minutes. Delegate Rummage of Prince George's County wanted to introduce a bill putting casinos in Ocean City. "As Mayor, I take a very strong stand … I think we got a good family image. I think he should stay in his own bailiwick … and Delegate Rummage, I think our City Solicitor sent a resolution to Delegate Hickman to introduce a bill and put a House of Prostitution over there to keep Rummage busy and stay the hell out of Ocean City." Councilman Trimper: "I'll get the bus warmed up, Mayor." Kelley asked for unanimity so the State's Attorney and the County Commissioners could testify against the bill, and got it. **Ocean City decided against casinos in the same year Atlantic City decided for them, in eleven minutes at the end of a January meeting.**
1977–1980
Fighting casinos at eleven, and asking for the hall at half nine
In March 1977 the town had two hearings in Annapolis on the same morning - "one of them is on gambling at 11:00 and of course the other one is on giving us Convention Hall at 9:30" - simultaneously fighting off casinos and trying to take ownership of the building the State had built to lengthen its season. Kelley's summary in August is the whole argument in one line: "the people that come here tell the Mayor that they do not want gambling." Three years later the market gave its own answer. At a Planning and Zoning hearing in March 1980 a bus operator applying for a lease was asked whether she was still running vans and buses to Atlantic City "for groups who were interested in the Casinos and gambling". Mrs. Marini denied it five times in three lines. **The town had refused the casinos and its visitors were being driven to them.**
1987–2000
Thirty years of principle, applied to a raffle
The refusal hardened into administration. Non-profit casino nights were still an agenda item in 1987. And in January 2000 the policy reached its logical end: "since the Ocean City Chapter of AARP has been meeting on city property, Northside Park, and the Town's policy of no gambling is enforced, they cannot offer their 50-50 drawing." Mayor Mathias had been at one of their meetings where the issue came up and felt the membership understood the town's position; an AARP member stood and quoted the policy back to the council to show that they did. **A rule made to keep casinos off the boardwalk now stops pensioners splitting a pot in a recreation centre**, and nobody in the room disputes it.
2008–2011 · pivotal
Six to one
After thirty-two years of refusing, the Mayor and Council voted **six to one** to support slot machines. The vote is the hinge of the thread and it reverses a position taken unanimously in 1976 by a mayor who had asked for unanimity precisely so that the county and the State's Attorney could testify on the strength of it. Three years later the Casino at Ocean Downs opened at Berlin - Maryland's second casino, eight miles inland from a boardwalk that had spent seventy years saying no. The reversal is not hypocrisy so much as arithmetic: the town had watched its own visitors bussed to Atlantic City since 1980, and by 2008 the alternative to saying yes was not a gambling-free county but a casino somebody else owned.
What we still cannot show
Recorded by the research itself, with where the answer would come from.
- 1946 **The August 1946 gambling order is missing from the town's own record.** Two council sittings reported by the Associated Press - the Saturday order removing all slot machines and the Monday bingo discussion - have no minutes, no calendar entry and no documents, and the council's own list of approved minutes names a third meeting that does not exist either.Where to look: Worcester County Circuit Court equity docket for the Jackson injunction; the town's paper ordinance book; contemporary wire service files
- 1976 **Delegate Rummage's 1976 casino bill has not been traced.** What it proposed and what became of it are unknown; the town's account is the only one read.Where to look: 1976 Maryland General Assembly records; Salisbury Daily Times
- 2008 **The 2008 reversal is known only as a vote count.** What was argued in the room, and who the one dissenting vote was, has not been read.Where to look: 2008 minutes in full; Maryland Coast Dispatch
Threads that cross this one
The Boardwalk: no founding date, because it was never foundedThe Hotels: the town's cause, its whole economy, and its standing risk