The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Iconic Boardwalk Town: Ocean City, Maryland

The Rise and Fall of America’s Most Iconic Boardwalk Town: Ocean City, Maryland In August of 1933, a hurricane tore across a thin strip of sand off the coast of Maryland and cut it clean in two. Today, on the southern half, wild horses wander across empty dunes, and on a winter morning you can walk for miles along the beach without seeing another person. On the northern half, a wall of concrete condo towers rises over the sand, and on a summer weekend more than 300,000 people squeeze into a town that has fewer than 7,000 year-round residents. To understand how a beach town ended up in a slow war with the island next door, we have to go back to a time when there was only one island.