Roaring changes: The century's early defining moments in Anne Arundel

Workmen complete one of the summer cottages built in Bay Ridge during the 1920s. By 1929, the Bay Ridge Realty Co. had sold 214 summer lots along the Chesapeake Bay outside Annapolis.

Former Annapolis mayor Robert Campbell was 8 years old when he began selling bottles to a local bootlegger on Prince George Street to help support his family.

It was the 1920s, and the 18th Amendment had outlawed the sale of liquor all across the nation. Most Anne Arundel County residents chose to observe Prohibition and remain dry, but options existed. "Bootlegging was an honorable profession then," Mr. Campbell said. "Everyone did it." All across the nation, mobsters tied to bootlegging were in the public eye. They were in the headlines, movies and hunted by federal agents.

The violence peaked in 1929, when Al Capone's gang posing as police in Chicago lined up rival thugs from Bugs Moran's bunch and gunned them down. The execution of seven men in a Chicago alley would be forever known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

Moonshine

Anne Arundel County was no stranger to the national campaign against liquor.

On Oct. 23, 1921, federal agents confiscated six stills and more than 100 gallons of moonshine one from the back yard of Deputy Sheriff William Crouse of Severn. But that didn't stop local kids from trying to make a buck or pennies. At the end of the decade, young Bobby Campbell, raised in the same Prince George Street home where he lives today, brought discarded pint and halfpint bottles to a nearby bootlegger's porch. Pint bottles fetched a penny, and half-pint bottles brought a half-cent.

"We would bring the bottles to the steps and the bootlegger would count them," Mr. Campbell said.

They were inspected, washed with BB's to dislodge the dirt and filled with whiskey for sale in the back yard. It was a casual kind of bootlegging, winked at by local law enforcement. But it reflected the easy pace of life in Anne Arundel County during the 1920s.

Defining moments in local history

As county residents get ready for the arrival of a new century and a new millennium in just 33 days, they are recalling some of the defining moments in local history over the last 100 years.

Life in the county was mainly rural during the second decade of the 20th century. Most residents made their living either farming or fishing.

The sandy soils of north county were made for truck farming, growing produce for urban markets, such as strawberries, plums, peaches, and beans. South county was known mainly for its tobacco.

North and south county residents had little to do with each other in those days, said Mark Schatz, vice president of publications for the Ann Arrundell County Historical Society. The difficulty of travel made mingling next to impossible. Most roads were unpaved, and although Fords and Chevrolets had made their debut, few people could afford cars until the late 1920s. North of Generals Highway, the county was more cosmopolitan, influenced by the theaters, shopping, dining and doctors in Baltimore. South of that historic road, Anne Arundel was dedicated to the close-knit southern plantation way of life.

As it has been for much of its three centuries, Annapolis was a different story. A thriving seaport known for oystering and clamming, it was also the seat of local, state and county government.

It was also home to the Naval Academy, a much smaller institution than today but still a major factor in local life.

But north or south, in Annapolis or out of it, a slower paced lifestyle had reigned for decades. It would take a transportation revolution to change things. All aboard!

The golden age of the railroads

The golden age of the railroads, from 1908 to 1935, brought a new way of life to county residents. "The railroads brought new people, new ideas and new money," Mr. Schatz said.

Railroads allowed farmers to move their crops out, and move people in. The county population grew from 43,408 in 1920 to 55,167 by the end of the decade.

The change began when the Baltimore, Annapolis and Washington Railroad converted from steam to electric power on its track from Annapolis to Annapolis Junction near the Howard County line. The former Annapolis and Elk Ridge Railroad track was combined with a new double track line from Baltimore to Washington, D.C. Together, the routes provided passenger service from Baltimore to Washington and Baltimore to Annapolis, criss-crossing the county north and south and east and west with lines that intersected near Odenton at Naval Academy Junction. Small villages soon began springing up along the lines.

"We saw three very large planned communities during that period; Epping Forest, Sherwood Forest, Herald Harbor and Arden on the Severn," said Donald Yeskey, President of the Generals Highway Council of Civic Associations. Until the 1920s Crownsville was largely farm land.

"The only other large facility was the Crownsville Hospital, built in 1911. Generals Highway was just a two-lane road," Mr. Yeskey said.

New lifestyles

If the decade brought more people, they often arrived with new lifestyles. The 1920s also was the age of flappers and jazz. By 1921, the pain of World War I and the influenza epidemic of 1919 were fading and the nation was ready for some fun. Americans were captivated by the exploits of Charles "Lucky Lindy" Lindbergh, who flew across the Atlantic from New York to France solo on his Spirit of St. Louis. Babe Ruth set a home run record when he hit 60 for the New York Yankees.

While young women in shapeless dresses and powdered knees were dancing the Charleston in speakeasies in Baltimore, a big night out in Anne Arundel County could include dancing at the elegant Brown's Grove pavilion on Gibson Island. Twenty wide beaches strung along the Patapsco River and Chesapeake Bay drew wealthy Baltimoreans to "the shore" for summer. Exhibits, carousels, fishing and swimming were the attractions.

"We think of the Patapsco as a dirty beach, but it was clean then," said Isabel Shipley Cunningham, 80, who has lived in Annapolis for almost 50 years.

"It was the place to be." The first and most successful of these resorts was Bay Ridge just outside Annapolis, known as the "Queen Resort of the Chesapeake."

In its heyday in the early 1900s, visitors arrived by train or steamer to sample the best accommodations, including music and exhibits at the pavilion.

"The restaurant pavilion could seat 1,600 people at one time with 80 waiters and waitresses," said Jane McWilliams, a local historian. But by 1903 the resort went belly up. "It was a huge money drain," Ms. McWilliams said. However, the hidden playground had been discovered. Resort visitors paved the way for a new crop of summer vacationers in 1922. The Bay Ridge Realty Co. took over the 387 acres that year and successfully developed it into a resort community. By 1929, 214 summer lots had been sold.

While Bay Ridge was a segregated retreat, whites were not the only ones to capitalize on the flight from the city.

"There was a time when blacks were extensive landowners in Anne Arundel County," said Jack Mr. Kelbaugh, 63, of Bay Ridge.

Kelbaugh is a member of one of the county's oldest families and a frequent contributor to historical journals.

Arundel on the Bay provided summer homes. The Sparrows Beach and Carr's Beach resorts were owned by local black families. Big-name entertainers such as Duke Ellington performed there for large crowds who could afford the 25-cent cost of an excursion steamer from Baltimore to Annapolis.

"They used to bring buses that would block one end of the city to another," said George Phelps, retired businessman and civic leader. " Now you have A Baltimore, Annapolis and Washington Railroad car heads out of the Central Depot in Severna Park. The arrival of electric rail service between Annapolis and Baltimore began a series of changes that would have great impact on Anne Arundel County in the 1920s. condominiums at those beaches starting at $200,000." Next

Anne Arundel County History: Roaring Changes, Law and Order, The Depression, The New Deal, An Education, War & Remembrance.

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