The Bethany Story

A Walk Through History 1901 - 1976
(Highlights Updated to 2001)

The Bethany Story

     As our country celebrates its 200th Glorious Fourth, Bethany Beach, Delaware, marks its 75th birthday as a religious summer retreat, a resort town and a state of mind.

     The founding of this little town by the sea is an often ignored accomplishment of members of the Christian Church, also known as the Disciples of Christ, of the Washington, D.C. area and Pennsylvania. They settled here in an era when the popular summer camp meetings sometimes led to permanent towns with religious names along the Atlantic. A nationwide competition led to the naming of Bethany and the winner, H. L. Atkinson, of the University of Chicago, received an ocean-front lot as his prize.

     Today Bethany may not be exactly as its founders dreamed in 1901 as they sought a gathering place on the Atlantic: "A suitable tract of land for a permanent yearly seaside assembly for the Christian Churches of this country."

     Yet in many ways Bethany reflects the character stamped on it by those early settlers, who in the words of a founding father, Dr. F. D. Power, Washington minister, were looking for "a haven of rest for quiet people," presenting a "safe and rational way of spending the heated term."

     Today sea and sand lovers of many persuasions are still searching for serenity and solace and rationality for that "heated term."

     It no longer takes two days to get here from Pittsburgh or a whole day from Washington, as some old timers remember. Ice is no longer kept back on the Evans pond to refrigerate the summer's fish and chicken. Fogging machines, not bullfrogs, are now expected to keep the mosquito population down. Gone are the songs, the poetry and the cheers and the Bethany Herald. There is no ban on Sunday bathing and sales of tobacco, candy and soft drinks. And gone too is the octagonal auditorium known as "The Tabernacle," (1) once a landmark in the vast assembly Grounds (2) of the Christian Missionary Society at the town's entrance.

Tabernacle Site

     A slim white cross, lighted to be seen by boardwalk strollers, tops the modest chapel which is now the center of the old Assembly Grounds on the west side of Pennsylvania Avenue between Garfield Parkway (Route 26) and Central Boulevard. The brown-shingled Tabernacle, nearly 100 feet in diameter, with its distinctive cupola and eight sides that slid back to bake entrances and vistas of the ocean and the countryside, was a famous landmark for some 60 years. Battered by storms and riddled with termites through the years, it was finally torn down as too costly to rebuild.

     It was the focus of Bethany’s beginnings. One July 12, 1901; the auditorium, though still an uncompleted building, was dedicated by D. C. France, Disciples leader from Philadelphia. An enthusiast from the beginning, France had formed a building group to lend money to build summer cottages.

     And that evening, Jacob K. Johler, president of the Bethany Beach Improvement Company, the land developers of that day, presented the deed to The Tabernacle and surrounding 16 acres of grounds to Dr. Power, representing the Christian Missionary Society. The Society still owns the large tract, including the wooded area across the dual highway.

     On that day also, a special committee representing the lot holders, the Improvement Company and the Missionary Society met and formed a temporary Bethany Beach government consisting of a Mayor, a secretary, a treasurer and six commissioners. While they had no legal authority to legislate for the community, their quickly proclaimed "requests" for the conduct of the citizens carried solid moral authority.

     The Improvement Company had been formed a few months before, on the inspiration of Dr Power and other Church leaders: by Johler, a real estate dealer; R. R. Bulgin, a Disciples preacher, and two other Scranton (PA) men, as well as an Ocean View man as the Delaware incorporator.

     A week of joyful religious services, camp meetings and programs ensued, but the road ahead was uncertain. There were only three cottages at that time, and most of the summer "residents " were in tents.

     This church area still resounds with the sounds of youthful religious two-week retreaters. If lawn tennis and croquet have been replaced by basketball and football scrimmage, the gospel songs of today intermingle with hard rock tunes of a Saturday night.

     But even as the strains of hymns and a Bethany Beach song (set to the tune of Marching Through Georgia) died away in the July week in 1901, troubles began to plague the eager leaders and followers of the Society who hoped to hound permanent settlement. In his notes of the history of Bethany Beach, the Rev Arthur Azlein said the discomforts of Disciples in their first summer at Bethany Beach were aggravated by the Improvement Company’s inaction in improving the site. Some lots were covered with sand dunes and others were swampy. The shallow wells provided unsatisfactory water. Rains poured freely into the unfinished auditorium. No work had yet begun on a railroad to the beach, which had been promised for operation by July 4, 1901. Reports of dissension in the company and of inadequate improvement work spread rapidly among lot holders and prospective buyers. Bethany beach fell into a state of suspended animation.

Six First Families

     The dissatisfaction of the lot holders, who had paid from $75 for inland lots to $200 for ocean from lots, caused the ousting of the Bethany Beach Improvement Company officers. The Missionary Society turned to six businessmen and churchmen from Pittsburgh to bail them out. In the fall of 1902 they bought up the company.

     It was these six men and their families who built cottages in the section north of the Church Assembly Grounds and who put their stamp on the development of the beach for many years to come. They were W. R. Errett, lawyer, John M. Addy, and plumber, W. S. Kidd, steel manufacturer, R. S. Latimer, a tea merchant (and bachelor), Dr. T. E. Cramblet, president of Bethany College in West Virginia (a Christian Church institution) and W. A. Dinker, the first president of the new company.

The Long Haul

     In the old days the trip to ‘Bethany Beach from Washington, D.C. or Pittsburgh, PA took fortitude, grit and patience in the face of up to two days of discomfort and even danger. The old Bethany Beach Canal, whose loop end (3) is off Street, is a reminder of the days when the cottages’ journey to the beach was mostly be rail and waterway.

     Once upon a time the canal's loop was the end of the long journey for new arrivals (3A) and for many years the site of the old Addy boat house (3B) where people could rent rowboats.

     Today the "Loop Canal" is a pleasant place to crab and catch minnows for the shore or from a boat rowed under the dual highway – but duck your head there! – to the edge of the Salt Pond.

     But before the Bethany Beach Canal – in the first few summers for the Addys and the Erretts and the other cottager First Families of the reorganized Improvement Company – the last part of the long journey was even more laborious. Then most came through Rehoboth, though later as highways were developed, some visitors came by rail through Frankford or Dagsboro.

     Let Miss Marjorie Erret, summer cottager still living in the area, tell about her first trips to the Beach from a Pittsburgh suburb.

     "We came down right after school closed in June. Mother would not travel with six children on a sleeper, so we took the day trip to Baltimore. Without a horse and buggy, we had to walk to our little station. We sent a big trunk ahead but everybody had to carry something. It was a half hour's trip by the Pennsylvania Railroad into Pittsburgh where we got off and had to walk across the river to the B&O station. Father got us a Pullman and we loved the all-day trip to Baltimore. We stayed at a hotel down near the docks so that early in the morning we could walk to the landing to get the boat across the Chesapeake to Love Point.

     On the dock at Baltimore, the Pennsylvania voyagers were joined by early cottagers from Washington, such as the families of Miss Katharine Wilfley, daughter of another Founding Father, the Rev. Earle Wilfley, and Mr. Ed Steele, grandson of Mr. Philip Steele who came in 1903. Both still summer in Bethany and Mr. Steele lives in Selbyville "off Season."

     The Washingtonians would have taken an early-morning rain to Baltimore and then a horse-drawn bus to the Light Street docks, as Mr. Steele recalls.

     At Love Point after the 3 or 4-hour trip across the Bay, Miss Wilfley reminisces, "we would board a narrow-gauge railroad train for another 3 or 4-hours trip through the Eastern Shore farming country to Rehoboth, right down the main street where the park is now, to the station." The old station building still stands, just off Rehoboth Avenue near the beach. The trip from Love Point on Kent Island to Rehoboth was made over the tracks of the Queen Anne Railroad.

     Miss Errett recalls that the families from Pittsburgh and Washington waited at the station for another train bringing people on the main line from Philadelphia. "After they arrived we would get on a big horse drawn bus that would take us back on Rehoboth Avenue to the Lewes-Rehoboth Canal. In the earliest days, we got on a little wood-burning steamer, the Atlantic, which took us down the canal, through Rehoboth and Indian River Bays, up White's Creek past where the Topside Restaurant is now, to Pennewell's Landing (37) - that was where the Assawoman Canal starts from White's Creek. There a two-horse bus would be waiting to take us the two miles through deep sand to our house on First Street. Quite a trip, two full days and we didn't get there till the end of the second day."

     Or, as Miss Wilfley puts it, "We had arrived! After a matter of 12 hours on leaving home in Washington, we were at Bethany Beach! No wonder, with trips like that in those days, even as late as 1913, when we went to Bethany Beach, we stayed!" Exhausted on arrival in the late afternoon, the families would promptly go to bed.

     There was a different slant on the trip in the brochure of the Bethany Beach Improvement Company promoting the sale of stock and lots: "Passengers from Washington pay $3.60 for a round-trip ticket good ten days, or $5 unlimited. There could not be a more picturesque route or a shorter one to the ocean."

     These are memories of those who were children then. And the parents? After long, smoky and dusty train rides, squall-tossed boat rides through the shallow inland waterways, and the wagons lurching through the sand and dust - children, plagues of sand flies and mosquitoes, it was little wonder that often on arrival the mothers - according to one of them - formed "a solid unit against imperiling their and their children's lives another season, no matter the spiritual significance of the summer in our lives." But most of them came back again and again.

     One of the first accomplishments of the rejuvenated Bethany Beach Improvement Company before the 1903 summer was to build the boardwalk along the ocean front with three roofed pavilions, and from this walk another to the auditorium in the Church Assembly Grounds. Before that time, "there was no Boardwalk but a multitude of Boardwalks," to quote the reminiscences of another brother of Miss Errett, the late Edwin R. Errett. The pavilions, destroyed and rebuilt several times in different locations throughout Bethany's history, have been used both for family fun and for town programs such as band concerts. At least once the central pavilion was the site of the annual Town election.

     The promised railway never came, but in 1907 the Improvement Company, let by Mr. Addy dredged the Bethany Beach Canal to the Beach from the old Assawoman Canal (then called the U.S. Government Canal).

     The new Bethany Beach Canal permitted travelers to come all the way to the Beach in one boat ride from Rehoboth. A shallow-draft motorboat, the Allie May, replaced the old steamer Atlantic for the last leg of the journey. "Often," Miss Wilfley remembers, "the boat was so heavily loaded, we youngsters could dip our hands and feet in the water as we chugged along across Rehoboth Bay, Indian River Bay and the canals."

     They chugged up the 1 ½-mile-long ditch, which still holds water though it's hardly navigable, to the loop at the foot of First Street, cut so the Allie May could turn around for the return voyage. It was a short walk for the cottagers between the boat landing at the end of the loop and their summer homes in the nearby streets.

     The Assawoman Canal is the western boundary of Bethany Beach; while the northern line follows the Bethany Beach Canal form the Assawoman east almost to the dual highway, then to Fifth Street and east on the street to the beachfront.

     As they breathed new life into the "suspended animation" of 1901 Bethany Beach, the six businessmen - church lay leaders who founded the abiding summer settlement of the Beach, put their families and their cottages where their promotions were. Built in 1902-03, five of these six sturdy cottages still stand - one in another part of town, moved because of a cloud on the land title.

     The four houses still to be seen are those of the Erretts (still in the family) and, next door, of the Kidd Family (4,5) on the north side of First Street (the 3rd and 2nd houses west of Atlantic Avenue); the Addy house (6), behind the Kidd house on the south side of Second Street, and the Latimer house (7) on Second, east of Atlantic. The two that are gone were the Dinkers' house (8), which was moved across the highway (36) and the Cramblets’ (9), which was Dinker cottage, built a little later at Atlantic and First, Survives (8A).

     While the pioneering families had their share of what some would consider inconveniences, hard work, or even hardships, there were also simple pleasures and fun for the finding. Of course there was the beach (what else?), but wary of the strong sun, they did not sunbathe as now and the women, fully covered, often carried black umbrellas there, or took a dip early before the sun became too strong. For the youngest, the ocean was for "bathing" - once a day at noontime, followed by the main meal of the day in the early afternoon because it was easier to cook, serve and eat by daylight than by the light of candles and oil lamps which served for years.

     "We lived very simply, really, but well," says Miss Errett, who first came at the age of 6 when the family cottage was being completed. She lives in Middlesex and her brother and sister visit here regularly. "My mother was a good cook, with one of those 3-burner oil stoves put out by Standard Oil. We had good vegetables, fruit, chickens and eggs brought by farmers in wagons over the sand from Ocean View." With no roads for many of those early years, salt hay was spread over the sands on the wagon routes to keep the wheels from sinking.

     "If the farm people didn't have what we wanted one day, they would take orders and come back with it the next day. There were two little grocers who came down by horse and buggy from Ocean View who did the same thing. The mothers knew them all. The farmers also collected our garbage. Without refrigeration, we didn't have fresh meat, but there was plenty of fresh fish available. The fish boats used to go out before daybreak every day they could (they were just good-sized dories) and then they'd come in about the time we were bathing and we'd get a fish and take it up to the cottage and cook it for dinner right then." With the good supply and the growing demand, Capt. Harry Bunting, whose experience with the Coast Guard made him a skilled small boat sailor, and his sons established a regular "fish market" on the beach.

     As now, crabbing was a favorite occupation, mostly in the salt pond, which was bigger than now before the Bethany Beach Canal partially drained it. Rowboats afforded pleasant jaunts in the canals and back bays - never in the ocean.

     There were also picnic and occasional daylong trips in 6-mule carryalls, to Fenwick Island or to Ocean City, by a zigzag route through Selbyville because there was no road south from Bethany until many years later.

     Picking berries - huckleberries, blackberries and others - was another pastime which was also useful, for the berries were not only eaten as picked, but also preserved or made into cordials.

     For the most part, it was a time when young people entertained themselves in their own close-knit little society. "We stayed on our end of the beach more," Miss Errett reminisces, "because there weren't real streets, there weren't many houses in the other section and we really were the center of town then."

     At night, they sometimes roasted corn or wieners and toasted marshmallows, when available, on prongs of saplings over driftwood fires on the beach. Informal songfests were popular.

     Mr. Addy was a plumber, and among other accomplishments gave his household and the Erretts' pure water by drilling deep wells in their lots through solid rock, deep enough for the Errett family, for one, to use until modern times when piped water came in. The Addys brought plumbing to Bethany Beach by installing it in their cottage. The Erretts had only a hand pump and sink in the kitchen to draw the water, while others relied on surface water. When Mr. and Mrs. Addy built and opened Addy Sea (10) in 1905, it was a showplace for the area, if only because of its bathrooms, indoor plumbing and its carbide gas lamps. The equipment was shipped by rail and barge from Pittsburgh. Though moved back from shore, repaired after loss of its porch and other storm damage, Addy Sea still stands near the beach on Ocean View Parkway like a Victorian dowager, proud and square with corner bays and fancy fretwork. Addy Sea was a summer place of hospitality shown by three generations of the Addy family for 70 years, from 1935 as a hostelry. It was sold two years ago by Mr. and Mrs. C. E. Addy, the third generation Bethany residents, and continues under new ownership.

     For many years of Bethany's earlier history, the Ray Hickmans' modern Pilot House Apartments building (11) fronting the beach on Fifth Street, which is still painted battleship gray, housed the Naval Radio Compass Station. This and two other stations, at Cape Henlopen and Cape May, would locate the position of a ship off the capes with radio direction finders tuned to the ship's signals. The signals, however, often ruined reception on local private radios.

     North of the Radio Compass Station, and in the same tract fronting 260 feet on the beach and 480 feet deep brought for $1 in 1905 by the U.S. Government, was the U.S. Life Saving Station which later became the Bethany Beach Coast Guard Station (12). Built in 1907, the station and its crew were called on many times to rescue shipwrecked sailors during its 25 years before it was abandoned and later moved.

     The blocks south of the Addy Sea, on the ocean front, where Seaside Village now stands, was the Seaside Inn (13), a well known place to stay for summer resorters from the time the first section of it was built at the turn of the century till its destruction by storm more than 60 years later. Originally named the Atlantic Bellevue and run by R. R. Bulgin, Church preacher and one of the first Bethany developers, it was a haven not only for visiting sojourners to the resort, but also the First Families and other early settlers as they acquired their land and while their cottages were being built.

     After Mr. Addy had introduced Bethany Beach to plumbing and bathrooms in his own house and in the Addy Sea, these fixtures became a must for the more pretentious cottages and especially the hostelries. The Seaside, in fact, added a castle-like tower, complete with crenellations on top, to house its newfangled bathrooms, which were connected with the corridors of each floor of the hotel.

     Two blocks south, Mr. Steele built his cottage, "Maryview," (14) on the boardwalk in 1903. Many others followed suit through the years.

     In three days of havoc in early March, 1963 the Seaside Inn, the bowling alleys (15) built a block south of it later on, Maryview and some 30 other Bethany landmarks, hostelries, Cottages and other buildings were crushed and blown to pieces by the force of a northeaster and a snowstorm from the Midwest which converged on the Delaware Coast and combined with tides at their monthly peak. Most of the destruction and damage to property and the serious beach erosion was wreaked by 20 to 30-foot vaves driven by the northeasterly winds with gusts up to 65 to 80 mph through four high tides. The boardwalk, pavilion, many parts of buildings and a variety of debris were found blocks inland. There were no casualties, thanks to the evacuation directed by the National Guard, State Police and local officials.

     The '62 storm, which is well remembered by many Bethany residents, especially "Mayor" Bennett, in charge of evacuation and clean-up as the then civil defense director, was one of several occurring in almost every decade. While it was from the first Bethany's prime reason for being and it greatest asset, that Old Debbil Sea has also been its most destructive force.

     Since the first boardwalk was built in 1903 it has had to be rebuilt at least five times, in some cases farther back from the sea because of beach erosion. The first time was only two years after the original walk was built, when the Improvement Company spent $239.32 on the reconstruction. Again, it was rebuilt in 1912, 1923, 1944 and 1962, and repaired several other times. In that first 1903 boardwalk, by the way, the main section (by what is now the new Bicentennial pavilion) (16) was built with a hump so that carriages and wagons could be driven from the main street, Garfield Parkway, under the boardwalk onto the beach. Conscious of the value of a clean beach, early town fathers enacted an ordinance requiring drivers to clean up their horse's droppings before they left the beach; and the other day, 70 years later, a carefree dog roaming the boardwalk cost it owner a $50 fine under a modern ordinance.

     Other cottages, built with the solid elegance of the early 1900's, rose on the waterfront. Mr. Louis (later State Senator) Drexler from Allegheny County, PA build in 1905 at what is now the corner section the "Ocean 8" townhouses at Campbell Place (17). The elegant Gram house was next door (17A). The Dresler house, moved three times away from the beach, still stands in solid serenity, now at the corner of Atlantic Ave (18). Not only was it moved, but also turned 90 degrees so its from door faces south on Campbell Place in stead of east as originally when the Drexler family could walk down the front steps onto the beach.

     Moving cottages and even larger structures such as the Addy Sea and the Drexler house seems to have become almost a way of life for Sussex County communities, because of beach erosion, economic and other reasons. (The Lower Delaware phone book’s Yellow Pages list three house and building movers, and five years ago there were several more.)

     One example is the large house known as “The Clubhouse,” now a private residence, at the southwest corner of Garfield and Atlantic (19). Miss Wilfley and others recall that it started life as a private club built by D. C. Frances, a lay church and social leader and first elected unofficial mayor, in its original location in a pine grove near Delaware Avenue (34). It was moved half a dozen blocks to its present location, where it was used by young people for dances, parties, shuffleboard and other games, and also for meetings, including town meetings. It later became the Townsend Hotel and then was sold for private use.

     Miss Wilfley recalls:
     “In the old days across the street from the clubhouse near the present Blue Surf was the ‘Drug Store,’ (20) where about the only drug in stock was Citronella! The greatest attraction was homemade ice cream. The owner made a gallon of it every so often and youngster would stand in line to get a small serving. Under no condition would the owner of the store sell more than individual servings, no matter how much you were willing to pay for it! He said if he sold all to one customer, there would be none for other people!”

     An elegant summer place from the early days to the ‘20s when it burned was the France family’s “long Cabin,” (21) where the Patty-Lin and the Baltimore Trust Co. now stand. Among other things, the family had the first (hand-wound) victrola.

     “Another landmark that still stands and is known as the Wilfley Place (22) was the Bethany Beach Lending Library conducted by Miss Louisa S. Weighton of Washington in her home which she called ‘Pine Rest Cottage,’ “ Miss Wilfley remembers. “She built it in 1905 in the pines and in 1915 it was moved to its present location at Pennsylvania Avenue and Garfield Park where she vacationed until her death.” In the 1920’s it was purchased by the Rev. Earle Wilfley; Miss Wilfley’s father a popular preacher and lecturer who succeeded Dr. F. D. Power as pastor of the Washington Christian Church which later became the National City Christian Church. Both these ministers, who were leaders in the development of the church assemblies and the summer resort itself, owned property at Bethany Beach from 1910 on, and for years vacationed here with their families. Sold in 1973, the Wilfley house is now a craft and gift shop.

     Now gone is the dwelling which was west of the Wilfleys’ known as the (John H.) Hargadine house (23) (from its last occupants), originally owned by Mrs. Lora Henderson (Daisey) and later by Mr. W. P. Short, who built the first electric plant and the first water plant in the other part of his block behind the present Town Hall (24). When the Town bought the water system in 1951, a room was added to the pumping station (25), which was to serve as the Town Hall until the present one was built in 1970. An early cottage in that block, behind the Fire House, still Hollywood Street, an early cottage (27) owned by the Dukes family (in what is now the parking lot) has been torn down. But two 1902 vintage structures, the one on the northwest corner of Pennsylvania and Hollywood (28), and the Caldwell house (29) on the south side of Hollywood, survive in modified form. At Atlantic Avenue and Hollywood (southwest corner) is the 60-year-old Speare cottage (30) built by a Government official in the early 1900s and still the summer home of this daughter, Miss Helen Speare of Washington. It was saved from demolition after the ’62 storm as a Bethany landmark with the help of the Christian Church.

     Long gone are the earliest simple inns, used by fishermen before the beach was Bethany Beach – the Shark House and the Surf House in the area of the present Blue Surf (20). Others followed, such as the Cecil Cottage, the Sussex Hotel (in the Bethany Arms area) (31), Blue Hen. West Breeze Hotel, Townsend Hotel, Sea Gull, Williams Inn (in the expanded first Addy house), Journey’s End, Holiday House…These are but a few of the hostelries that stamped the later character of Bethany with the hospitality, good cooking and pride of family inn keeping enjoyed by visitors during the life of the resort.

     It was the church leaders who for many years set the summer tone for this beach community. Regular programs of lectures and classical music, as well as prayer meetings and gospel singing, were scheduled throughout the summer at the auditorium on the church grounds. The most successful camp meetings in Bethany were held in the years up to World War I, during the heyday of “Chatauquas” – those warm-weather camp meeting programs conducted in beach or mountain resorts from upper New York State to the Carolinas. They spread culture, knowledge and a sense of moral or even patriotic uplift to many thousands every summer. During a typical week at Bethany Beach, for instance, besides sermons (two each Sunday) there were four lectures by college professors on historical and other topics, two stereopticon (slide) shows, two conferences, a patriotic mass meeting addressed by politicians and ending with a ‘grand fireworks display,” and a “mass meeting of Bethany Beachers” on “the good of the Beach,” followed by a “grand musical concert.” A lover of dramatics, the Rev. Wilfley also brought acting groups in. Both participants and audience came from a wide area of the Eastern United States.

     No doubt reflecting the moral tone and propriety of the religious group that founded the town, every lot in Bethany Beach sold by the half a century later, was to revert to the seller if any of three conditions, especially the first, was violated: “That no intoxicating liquors shall ever be sold on said tract, lot or lots;” that no building should be built within 10 feet of the lot line; and that all buildings “shall be kept neatly painted.”

     It might now be difficult for the residual Improvement Company, whose trustee is William Errett, son of one of the town’s founders, or others to defend the constitutionality of these covenants restricting older deeds still held by many of Bethany’s present-day property owners. But “Mayor Sidney Bennett, chairman of the Board of Commissioners, points-out that there are still no licenses to sell liquor, the zoning ordinance is more strict and detailed than the covenant as to what and where you may build, and, though the town does not enforce “neat painting,” never the yards and vacant lots. Tall weeds and brush are not tolerated.

     Pioneering women of Bethany, many of them members of the influential Christian Women’s Board of Missions, conducted early boarding houses, bathing houses and even hotels in the early days and seemed to wield unusual influence in the community. Women’s rights came relatively early to Bethany Beach, which was incorporated in 1909. The Bethany Booster boasted that the town charter “not only provides for ‘initiative’ and ‘referendum’ but for Female Suffrage as well.” And this seeming advance apparently formally incorporated a respect for the ability of women that was shown from the very beginning by the citizens of the new resort. For when the first temporary government for Bethany Beach was established in 1901, two of the six commissioners elected were women: others have been elected since from time to time.

     And half a century ago, 18 women organized the Women’s Civic Club of Bethany Beach “for civic purposes and improvements of the town.” Over the past 50 years its members, who now number 325 have worked toward these goals by sponsoring many civic projects from the proceeds of card parties, lawn fetes, bake sales and tag days.

     The first civic improvement, which continues as the club’s major project, was the installation of benches on the boardwalk and their maintenance in good repair. Other improvement projects, conducted by the Civic Club until the town Board assumed responsibility, have included placing the Town’s first street signs, trash containers on the beach and other areas, and equipment for the lifeguards.

     The women have also been concerned with training of the lifeguards, enlisting the help of the American Red Cross to improve standards and performance, and have made annual donations to the Fire Company.

     For the past four years, a monthly letter has been sent to all members and subscribers keeping them informed of town, county and state actions. This has proven to be one of the most successful and appreciated activities of the Club.

     After the Town completes the sewer system and street rehabilitation, the Civic Club’s next major project will be to carry out a beautification plan, with appropriate shrubbery and flowers to be placed around town.

     A World War I lull at Bethany was followed by a boom in the ‘20s a movie theatre, electric lights, flappers and flaming youth. By 1925 – alas – the Town Board felt forced to hire a police officer ($150 a month and board at the Seaside at $17 a week) “to meet present conditions of drunkenness and rowdiness.”

War Changes and Sea Changes

     Two World Wars, several hurricanes, the phenomenal, destructive storm of March 1962 and the build-up along the coast of resorts in the past decade have all wreaked changes – many unwelcome – to Bethany Beach. Old-timers have difficulty remembering “what was where.”

     Pool halls, the movie house (Ringler’s, started by the father of the present bank manager in the tract (20) not occupied the Blue Surf) and bingo parlors have come and gone along Bethany’s boardwalk and their passing has not always been mourned.

     During World War II, when soldiers were quartered here for coastal defense, Journey’s End (32), on the northwest corner of Atlantic and Parkwood, was rechristened “Fort Maggie,” for the duration by a group of barrack Signal Corps men to install radar along the coast. It was named for Mrs. Margaret Hughes, the “house mother.” The old auditorium on the church grounds, which had sometimes been used as a boy’s dorm during youth conferences, housed Nave personnel on coastal defense duty. St. Martha’s Episcopal Church at Maplewood and Pennsylvania Avenue (33) was established in that period.

     It was the ‘winter surge” storm of March 1962, however, that ended an era at Bethany, finally and fatefully. Landmarks such as the old Seaside Inn at the north end of the boardwalk, Maryview, one of the first cottages, and the W. W. Bride cottage, last sentinel to the south, all washed out to sea “on the fourth high tide” leaving hardly a trace behind.

     Slowly at first, and then in one grand rush, the town repaired after the storm, rebuilt and grew…to the south and west. Bethany West is today a thriving, tennis-oriented community of single homes.

     And just over the town line, to the south, rose Sea Colony, a monumental, 5-building, high-rise housing several thousand condominium units.

     Garfield Parkway, the one truly commercial street in Bethany, has, with few exceptions, lost its turn of the century flavor to the practicality of food shops, dress shops, motels, gift shops and restaurants. At the sleek bank, the Baltimore Trust, however, the Women’s Civic Club has installed a panel of memorabilia, notably pictures, detailing the history of Bethany – straw-hat mules, bathing bloomers and all. It is viewed by many visitors, as both nostalgic and younger.
     At age 75, Bethany looks toward the future but holds tight to the spirit of its past.

Published by the Bethany Beach Landowners' Association as a public service to mark the 75th Anniversary of the Founding of the Town of Bethany Beach, Delaware on July 12, 1901, and in conjunction with the American Revolution Bicentennial. Sanctioned by the Bethany Beach Committee for the Bicentennial, Robert C. Maxwell, Chairman. Reprinted in 2001 by the BBLA, with updated Highlights of Bethany Beach History.

Copyright 1976, 1991, 2001 Bethany Beach Landowners' Association