Qualla: Worcester County, Maryland

Worcester County, Maryland: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Ostrowski from North Bethesda, Maryland, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0. A hurricane cut Maryland's only ocean inlet by accident. In August 1933, a Category 1 storm slammed the Eastern Shore and shoved enough water through a low spot in the barrier island that when the surge receded the ocean had a new permanent connection to Sinepuxent Bay. Until then, Ocean City had been a sleepy resort with no harbor. Overnight it had a deepwater inlet that the Army Corps of Engineers quickly stabilized with jetties. The storm tore apart the town's boardwalk but built the town's fishing fleet. Most counties in America had to engineer their geography. Worcester County had its geography engineered by accident, by a storm, in a single afternoon.

Image: Mike Ostrowski from North Bethesda, Maryland, USA | CC BY-SA 2.0

Worcester County, Maryland: Stephen Decatur Was Born Here

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Doug Kerr from Upstate New York, CC BY-SA 2.0. Worcester County is the only county in Maryland that borders the Atlantic, the only one bordering both Delaware and Virginia, and the easternmost piece of the state. It was carved out of the much larger Somerset County in 1742 and named for Mary Arundell, wife of Sir John Somerse...

Image: Doug Kerr from Upstate New York | CC BY-SA 2.0

Worcester County, Maryland: Abolitionists Among the Cypress

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bwave at English Wikipedia, CC BY 2.5. Worcester County had one of Maryland's most unusual antebellum demographics. In the 1840s and 1850s it had the highest proportion of free people of color per capita of any county in the state - a result, the historians argue, of long Quaker and Methodist influence. The county had...

Image: Bwave at English Wikipedia | CC BY 2.5

Worcester County, Maryland: Furnacetown and the Bald Cypress

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Linda Roy Walls, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Pocomoke River runs through bald cypress swamps - the only natural cypress stands this far north on the Atlantic coast. In the first half of the nineteenth century, a brick blast furnace at Furnacetown smelted bog iron ore mined from the swamp into pig iron. The community gre...

Image: Linda Roy Walls | CC BY-SA 3.0

Worcester County, Maryland: Two Storms, One National Seashore

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NASA, Public domain. Two storms in the twentieth century shaped Worcester County. The 1933 Chesapeake-Potomac Hurricane cut the Ocean City Inlet, transforming the resort. The Ash Wednesday Nor'easter of March 1962 hit even harder. Sustained winds and astronomical high tides drove a four-day storm sur...

Image: NASA | Public domain

Worcester County, Maryland: Ocean City and the Year-Round Coast

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0. Ocean City was founded in 1875 as a railroad-and-steamer summer resort and stayed seasonal for nearly a century. The post-1960s expansion - which built the boardwalk hotels, the condominiums north of the inlet, and the Coastal Highway that runs ten miles along the island - has tu...

Image: Antony-22 | CC BY-SA 4.0