Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times And Corruption of Atlantic City (4 page)

Construction of the railroad under Osborne’s direction began in earnest in August 1853. Starting from Camden, trees were cut, hills leveled, and swamps filled as the Camden-Atlantic Railroad chopped its way through the forest. There were no curves in Osborne’s steel ribbons. The only thing that broke the woodlands was the railroad itself. The single most difficult portion in constructing the railroad was over the marshes between the mainland and the island.

The weather that winter had been favorable to work on the railroad, “but in February a storm tide made a clean sweep of the roadbed which had been graded on the meadows.” Osborne’s crew worked for two months to restore the rail line when again in April “a terrible Northeast storm prevailed for a week, flooding the meadows, sweeping away miles of the graded roadbed which was ready for the track and scattering the ties and wheelbarrows for miles along the coast.” Finally, the weather relented and the rail line was extended to the bay across from Absecon Island in July 1854.

At the same time work was progressing on the rail line, the Camden-Atlantic Land Company had Osborne prepare a street plan for Pitney’s beach village. Having acquired nearly all of Absecon Island, the investors were eager to create lots for resale. As he had in drawing the right-of-way for the rail line, Osborne’s map for this new village paid no regard to the virgin landscape. Any physical obstacle in the way of the street lines, such as sand dunes running the length of the island, fresh water ponds, and nesting areas for waterfowl, had to go. Under Osborne’s direction, Absecon Island was cut into neat little squares and rectangles, creating lots ideal for maximizing profits from land sales.

When Richard Osborne unveiled his map of this new seashore town, the words “Atlantic City” appeared across the top on a background of breaking waves. According to Osborne, the investors accepted his suggestion for the name immediately. Hoping to appeal to visitors beyond Philadelphia, the street map assigned each state in the nation its own avenue. Richard Osborne believed that it was this new resort’s “manifest destiny” to become “the first, most popular, most health giving and most inviting watering place” in the country. While he knew Philadelphia would provide the bulk of the visitors, Osborne dreamt that Atlantic City would become a national resort with patrons from around the country.

Opening day for the Camden-Atlantic Railroad was July 1, 1854. The first train, an “official special,” consisted of nine passenger cars and left from the Cooper’s Ferry terminal in Camden. Ferryboats from Philadelphia brought a stream of guests, each with a printed invitation, and hundreds of curiosity seekers who came to see the first iron horse leave for the seashore. “Finally, a bit after 9
A.M.
, the engine whistle sounded, the iron horse belched a great cloud of black smoke, there was a grinding and creaking—and the train got under way.”

The 600 passengers on board were chosen carefully by Samuel Richards and Jonathan Pitney. They were newspapermen, politicians, and wealthy notables of the day—all having been invited to help in promoting the resort. There were several stops along the way to permit the major shareholders to make speeches and show off their investment to their friends and employees. One of the riders wasn’t terribly impressed with the trip, describing the ride as a “desolate succession of pine trees and cedar swamps,” adding, “No towns or cities were found along the way; only here a woodcutter’s or charcoal burner’s hut and there a rickety saw mill.”

Two and a half hours after leaving Camden the train ride ended at the mainland, and the passengers were taken across the bay in row-boats to Atlantic City. A bridge linking the mainland to the island would be completed several months later. After arriving in Atlantic City, a second train brought the visitors to the door of the resort’s first public lodging, the United States Hotel. The hotel was owned by the railroad. It was a sprawling four-story structure built to house 2,000 guests. It opened while it was still under construction, with only one wing standing and even that wasn’t completed. But by year’s end, when it was fully constructed, the United States Hotel was not only the first hotel in Atlantic City but also the largest in the nation. Its rooms totaled more than 600, and its grounds covered some 14 acres.

Upon their arrival, the resort’s first visitors were treated to an extravagant meal followed by speeches and music. After dinner many of the guests strolled on the beach where they entertained themselves exploring the remains of shipwrecks. Following this private debut, the Camden-Atlantic Railroad was opened to the public on July 4, 1854. For the remainder of the summer, nearly every train that left Camden was sold out.

It was a proud time for Jonathan Pitney. While his profits didn’t begin to measure up to those of Samuel Richards, Pitney had saved himself from obscurity. The railroad made it possible for the populations of Philadelphia and Camden to visit the seashore in a single day without the need or expense of a long vacation. It also fulfilled Samuel Richards and the other investors’ hope of generating a land boom along its route. In less than three years, 15 train stations sprang upon between Camden and Atlantic City. The Richards family sold much of their land and reaped a huge windfall. Land values on Absecon Island skyrocketed. Sand dunes and meadowlands purchased for as little as $5 per acre were resold several years later at prices of up to $300 per acre. Jonathan Pitney never made this kind of money practicing medicine.

Success at real estate speculation came quicker than the development of a full-fledged resort. Pitney was pleased with his beach village, but it was a long way from being a serious resort. He knew that a permanent community had to be established, which would take time and a great deal of money. The obstacles to be overcome were many. First, there was the trainride itself—at best, it was an adventure. The early trains had no windows, only canvas curtains, and it was common for visitors to arrive covered with soot, their clothes and skin pocked by flying cinders from the coal-fired locomotive. A linen duster with hat and goggles were important accessories to the traveler’s wardrobe.

One of the early conductors of the Camden-Atlantic Railroad recalled his experience: “Atlantic City in 1854–55 was reached through sand hills and forests of pine and scrub oaks. Most of our cars were open coaches. My, how the dust did fly!” The early trains weren’t equipped with signals of any kind and, “When I wanted to stop the train to let off passengers, I went through the train and attracted the engineer’s attention by striking him with a splinter of wood and by holding up my fore finger told him a passenger was to get off at the next station.”

The adventure didn’t end with the train ride. When travelers arrived, they found a much bigger dose of nature than the resort’s promotions had led them to believe. The island was dotted with hundreds of wet places where insects could breed, and early guests were greeted by swarms of greenhead flies and mosquitoes.

Summer 1858 saw a plague of insects that nearly closed the resort down. Greenhead flies, gnats, and mosquitoes tormented the visitors all summer long. By mid-August most guests had stopped coming to town. One vacationer wrote home, “In my last letter I said mosquitoes were numerous here. They have since become a plague and there is no peace in this place.” The resort’s inability to deal with the problem was painfully obvious to its guests. “Last week the place was crowded with visitors; now they are escaping the scourge as rapidly as possible. This house is now surrounded with bonfires, in the hope that the smoke therefrom will drive off the enemy. The horses attached to carriages containing guests from the United States Hotel became so maddened from the attack of greenhead flies that they ran away demolishing the carriage, and broke the arm of one of the ladies.”

It was a nightmare that summer. According to reports from the time, horses covered with blood laid down in the streets, and cattle waded out into the ocean to escape the torture of the insects. Men, women, and children scratched and screamed and day visitors begged the conductors to start home ahead of schedule. For the next 10 to 15 years, the problem with the mosquitoes and greenhead flies was dealt with by pouring coal oil on the water of the ponds and wet spots that dotted the islands. The pests were eventually eliminated when the dunes were graded and the ponds filled with sand.

During these early years, the only refuge from insects for the visitor who went down to the beach was to either go into the water or hide in a bathhouse. The bathhouses were crude wooden structures that were carried down to the water’s edge in the spring and dragged back to the dunes in the fall. Another difficulty was the lack of something to separate the developed portion of the island from the beach. Sand was everywhere and it was common for the streets to flood at high tide.

Though seawater was everywhere, it wasn’t drinkable. For the first 30 years of Atlantic City’s existence, residents and visitors alike had to rely upon rainwater collected in cisterns as the sole source of water. True to its beginnings as a farm island, the cattle of local farmers were allowed to run free during the first decade of the resort. “Prior to 1864, the cattle, swine, and goats were permitted to run at large in the city. Up until that time every permanent resident of the place owned one or more cows.” Atlantic City’s main thoroughfare, Atlantic Avenue, was originally a cow path for cattle driven by farmers in the inlet area to the lower end of the island. As late as the 1880s one could see herds of cows being taken from one end of the town to the other and returned at night through the center of the village on Atlantic Avenue.

Finding the money for the improvements needed to establish a permanent community on Absecon Island was a lot more difficult than securing investors for the railroad. The original investors had gotten what they wanted and cared little about Pitney’s dream of a city by the sea. The Camden-Atlantic Railroad and the Land Company would finance only so much to help build Pitney’s resort. Plans for cutting through streets, leveling the dunes, filling ditches, and beginning the infrastructure needed for a city simply had to wait. The result was that for the first 20 years of its existence, Pitney’s beach village limped along, remaining a wilderness island.

As predicted by some of Pitney’s critics, Cape May remained a popular resort and posed stiff competition. Pitney had envisioned his resort as an exclusive area for the rich. The wealthy were slow to change their habits and while a few of them visited the fledgling resort, Cape May held a strong attraction. Anyone with enough money for an overnight stay generally preferred to visit Cape May. As for the working class, whose numbers in Philadelphia and Camden were growing steadily, the cost of vacationing remained beyond their reach. The blue-collar masses couldn’t afford the price of both a train ticket and the cost of lodging. The few who visited arrived in the morning and returned home at night.

At first, the Camden-Atlantic Railroad was barely able to break even financially. As an early observer noted, “Unpropitious times, flooding and washing away of tracks, and depression of bonds threatened to overwhelm the enterprise at its beginning. For 16 years it was one continuous struggle against these difficulties.” The railroad was forced into bankruptcy during the Panic of 1857, and if not for cash from the Land Company, the train would have gone under. The financial uncertainty produced by the Civil War denied the new resort badly needed investors and retarded the town’s growth. By 1872 things began to look up. The quality of the ride had improved and the passenger cars were clean and comfortable; there was even glass in the windows. The railroad was carrying more than 400,000 passengers annually to the resort and was able to pay a dividend to its stockholders. The volume of passengers continued to grow, and by 1874 nearly 500,000 passengers were brought into Atlantic City by rail.

After 20 years, Atlantic City had finally gained a foothold. Pitney finished out his years living quietly in Absecon Village and passed away in 1869. But for the younger Samuel Richards, Atlantic City was still a long way from its potential. There remained hundreds of undeveloped acres and no new investors to inject sorely needed capital. The businesses that survived the first two decades were only marginally successful. Their owners returned to Philadelphia each fall, leaving the resort a ghost town. Samuel Richards realized that mass-oriented facilities had to be developed before Atlantic City could become a major resort and a permanent community. From Richards’ perspective, more working-class visitors from Philadelphia were needed to spur growth. These visitors would only come if railroad fares cost less.

For several years Samuel Richards tried, without success, to sell his ideas to the other shareholders of the Camden-Atlantic Railroad. He believed that greater profits could be made by reducing fares, which would increase the volume of patrons. A majority of the board of directors disagreed. Finally in 1875, Richards lost patience with his fellow directors. Together with three allies, Richards resigned from the board of directors of the Camden-Atlantic Railroad and formed a second railway company of his own. Richards’ railroad was to be an efficient and cheaper narrow gauge line. The roadbed for the narrow gauge was easier to build than that of the first railroad. It had a 3½-foot gauge instead of the standard 4 feet 8½ inches, so labor and material would cost less.

The prospect of a second railroad into Atlantic City divided the town. Jonathan Pitney had died six years earlier, but his dream of an exclusive watering hole persisted. Many didn’t want to see the type of development that Samuel Richards was encouraging, nor did they want to rub elbows with the working class of Philadelphia. A heated debate raged for months. Most of the residents were content with their island remaining a sleepy little beach village and wanted nothing to do with Philadelphia’s blue-collar tourists. But their opinions were irrelevant to Samuel Richards. As he had done 24 years earlier, Richards went to the state legislature and obtained another railroad charter.

The Philadelphia-Atlantic City Railway Company was chartered in March 1876. The directors of the Camden-Atlantic were bitter at the loss of their monopoly and put every possible obstacle in Richards’ path. When he began construction in April 1877—simultaneously from both ends—the Camden-Atlantic directors refused to allow the construction machinery to be transported over its tracks or its cars to be used for shipment of supplies. The Baldwin Locomotive Works was forced to send its construction engine by water, around Cape May and up the seacoast; railroad ties were brought in by ships from Baltimore.