Tours

Boardwalk History Walk

One mile of boards, 150 years of stories — from the surfmen who watched the ocean to the storm that remade the town.

7 stops · 1 hr 15 min walk · 1.1 miles

  • 🚶 On foot
  • History
  • 🪙 50 Sand Dollars on completion

See this tour on the map →

  1. Face the Inlet — you're standing on land that didn't exist before 1933. We'll get to that.

    Ocean City Life-Saving Station Museum

    Start where OC's story is kept: an 1891 U.S. Life-Saving Service station. The 'surfmen' who lived here rowed into storms to pull shipwrecked sailors out of the Atlantic — before the Coast Guard existed. The whole building was moved here, to the Inlet, in 1977 to save it.

    Full details, hours & sources for Ocean City Life-Saving Station Museum →

  2. Cross to the amusement block at the Boardwalk's south end.

    Trimper's Herschell-Spillman Carousel

    Inside Trimper's spins a Herschell-Spillman carousel that has been turning since 1912 — often called the oldest continuously operating carousel in America. Its 45 animals were carved by hand; its twin at Coney Island burned. This one survived every fire and storm this tour is about.

    Full details, hours & sources for Trimper's Herschell-Spillman Carousel →

  3. Baltimore Ave & S Division St — one block west of the boards.

    The Henry Hotel

    The brown-shingled building across from Trimper's is the last surviving 'colored hotel' in OC. In the segregation era, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, and a young James Brown played the Pier Ballroom — then slept here, because the boardwalk hotels wouldn't have them. Pearl Bonner ran it for forty summers. It's now being restored as a museum of Black life in Ocean City.

    Full details, hours & sources for The Henry Hotel →

  4. Back to the boards at Wicomico St.

    Atlantic Hotel

    OC began here on July 4, 1875: a 400-room grand hotel on an empty barrier island. In December 1925 a fire tore through and leveled three downtown blocks — the hotel, the Pier, Dolle's, all of it. What you see is the 1926 rebuild, run by the same family since 1923.

    Full details, hours & sources for Atlantic Hotel →

  5. The Pier, at Wicomico St.

    Pier Ballroom & Bandshell Site

    • 🏖️ History stop — Site only — the building is gone

    The Pier building (1907, rebuilt after the fire) held a dance hall, a bowling alley, and a silent-movie theater. The big bands that couldn't sleep downtown played here to packed summer crowds. Read the historical marker, then look up at the Ferris wheel that took the skyline over.

    Full details, hours & sources for Pier Ballroom & Bandshell Site →

  6. Philadelphia Ave & S Division St.

    Train Depot Site

    • 🏖️ History stop — Site only — the building is gone

    Ocean City was born a railroad town — from 1876, visitors crossed the bay by train to a depot near this spot. On the night of August 23, 1933, a hurricane destroyed the trestle and ended the rail era in a single storm. The same storm gave the town its future: keep walking south.

    Full details, hours & sources for Train Depot Site →

  7. Ocean City Inlet & Jetty

    Finale: the Inlet itself. The 1933 hurricane cut a 50-foot channel here overnight; a second hurricane a month later widened it to 500. The Army Corps made it permanent — and accidentally created the White Marlin Capital of the World, separated Assateague from town, and turned a rail resort into a fishing port. Every era of OC pivots on the water you're looking at.

    Full details, hours & sources for Ocean City Inlet & Jetty →

    Quiz yourself: What year did the storm cut the Inlet?
    1. 1925
    2. 1933
    3. 1962
    4. 1942

    Answer: 1933