Denton and Choptank were to have been two Eastern Shore stops for a steamship line from Chesapeake Beach in Anne Arundel County in the late 1920s, but the ships never sailed.

They were to have been part of a grandiose project to transform the Chesapeake Bay resort into another Newport or Atlantic City around the turn of the century, but it was not to be.

While the bayfront resort south of Annapolis did flourish for a number of years, thanks to a 32-mile-long rail line from Washington, D.C., the automobile ultimately spelled its doom and the proposed excursion steamers from the resort, across the bay and up the Choptank never materialized.

In the late 1800s, Otto Mears, a pioneer Colorado narrow-guage railroad builder, was sold on the idea of erecting a modern-day Monte Carlo and summer resort close to the nation’s capital to be served by a rail line.

He raised the money, named it the Chesapeake Beach Railway, and by early 1900 hand constructed the 32- mile line to the resort where a sandy beach and amusement park, complete with over-the-water roller coaster, carousel and other forms of entertainment attracted thousand of vacationers.

But the grand hotels were never built and even though excursion ships from Baltimore brought visitors the same as they did to Tolchester on the Eastern Shore, the resort declined in popularity.

In 1928, the board of directors of the railway named G.F. Detrick, formerly with the Sacramento Northern Railway, as president, and Eugene Fox, of the Western Pacific, as vice-president of the line.

Soon after taking office, the two embarked on an ambitious effort to put the line in the ferry business.

They talked with many Eastern Shore bankers, industrialists and farmers and concluded that Chesapeake Beach’s falling passenger receipts would be offset by promoting car, truck and freight traffic between Washington and the Delmarva Peninsula.

A map printed in a book entitled “The Chesapeake Beach Railway,” shows the proposed ferries would sail from Oxford in Talbot County, and up the Choptank River to Cambridge, Secretary, Choptank and as far as Denton.

The development plan called for the purchase of two steel ferryboats that could carry 95 cars on the main deck and 1,800 passengers on the upper, or saloon level. With slips at Chesapeake Beach and Trippe’s Bay, some 16 miles apart, it was calculated that the trip across the bay would take an hour and 30 minutes less than the ferry operating between Annapolis and Claiborne.

Since the Claiborne-Annapolis Ferry Company enjoyed a virtual monopoly of trans-Bay traffic, its officials protested the new venture vigorously.

In 1930, the Interstate Commerce Commission approved the application of the Chesapeake Beach Railway for the new ferry service, but the officials of the older ferry company took it to court and the legal ranglings dragged on for two years.

It wasn’t until February 18, 1933, the lowest point of the Great Depression, that the ICC finally approved a loan of $425,000 to the Chesapeake Beach Railway to begin its ferry system.

The award came as an anticlimax.

So much time and money had been spent in the long legal battle with the Claiborne-Annapolis Ferry Company that the final victory was a hollow one. The directors had decided some months earlier that the project could not be financed at any price, however favorable the terms might be.

So the dreams of a second ferry line crossing the Chesapeake Bay and picking up passengers and freight as far up the Choptank as Denton died a-borning.

And on April 15, 1935, the final passenger train out of Chesapeake Beach to Washington slowly made its way westward as the crew padlocked each of the empty depots along the line.

The story of the relatively short life (35 years) of the Chesapeake Beach Railway is a sadly familiar one in modern railroading.