Ocean Beach: The City That Almost Was
Near Ocean City, Maryland
That same nineteen sixty two storm did something else, just south of here, that shaped this whole coast. In nineteen fifty, a group of Baltimore and Washington investors bought up much of Assateague Island, planning a rival resort. They were going to call it Ocean Beach, an Ocean City of the south.
They meant business. By the early nineteen sixties they had paved a road down the island, put up street signs, sold thousands of building lots, and put up a handful of houses. Then, in the first week of March, nineteen sixty two, the Ash Wednesday storm rolled in.
Assateague went completely underwater. Protective dunes washed away, and the storm destroyed or buried most of that paved boulevard and the little settlement along it. The dream of Ocean Beach essentially drowned that day.
In nineteen sixty five, after years of debate in Congress, the Maryland portion of the island was set aside instead as Assateague Island National Seashore, protected forever from development. So the wild, empty beach you see to the south is not an accident. It is a resort that the sea refused to allow.
