From Bucket Brigades To Today: North Beach Fire Department Marks 100 Years

NORTH BEACH, Md. — On Sunday, March 22, the Bayside History Museum in North Beach hosted its final lecture in its Winter Lecture Series. The lecture that day was given by North Beach Volunteer Fire Department (NBVFD) Assistant Chief John Tippett, in anticipation of the department’s centennial anniversary coming up in August of this year.

Tippett opened his lecture by recounting the history of the Twin Beaches area and the firefighters who served Chesapeake and North Beach before the modern NBVFD was founded in 1926. The town of Chesapeake Beach was founded as a resort by railroad tycoon Otto Mears in the late 19th century. To fulfill his dream of building an American Monte Carlo, Mears constructed a railway from Washington, D.C., to Chesapeake Beach, the end of which still exists and is home to the Chesapeake Beach Railway Museum. He also built a 1,600-foot-long wooden boardwalk over the Chesapeake Bay with a mile-long dock to serve steamships.

This massive wooden structure and the dozens of buildings around it were protected by a team of 25 volunteer firefighters, which was one-eighth of the town’s population at the time. These volunteers were equipped with a 20-gallon chemical extinguisher on a hand-pulled cart, and 300 feet of 2.5-inch-diameter hose on another cart and a lot of buckets, Tippett said. Back then, the town was lit with electric lights and connected by telephone, but the roads were unpaved and there was no fire alarm system.

“So we have fire protection, we have firefighters, but we have no way of telling you when there’s a fire,” Tippett said, “except for somebody yelling ‘Fire!’ or seeing the smoke.”

Tippett showed a video demonstrating a bucket brigade, a tried-and-true technique for fighting fires with limited infrastructure or technology. In a bucket brigade, firefighters — and sometimes other members of the community who happened to be on the scene and ready to help — would form a human chain and pass buckets from a water source to the fire to try to douse it, passing empty buckets back along the chain after they had been used.

These techniques and this equipment were used with mixed results at fires in the Twin Beaches during the early 20th century. On April 21, 1910, the casino and dance hall burned to the ground, but determined locals rebuilt the place in time for the season opening on May 28 that same year.

The next major fire was at the Belvedere Hotel on March 30, 1923. The loss cost about $50,000 in 1923, which would be worth approximately $955,500 today.

Tippett said that during this fire, telephone operators contacted fire departments in nearby metropolitan centers like D.C. and Annapolis for assistance. D.C. sent an engine, which was totaled on its way to Chesapeake Beach.

“For three hours,” Tippett said, “the bucket brigade lined up from the Belvedere Hotel at the end of 17th Street down to the Bay and back. Trading buckets. Fighting the fire. So it’s 100 men in the previous articles. I found this article that says women were also involved. The women were on the empty side, and the men were on the full side.”

Tippett said that this configuration for bucket brigades, with men moving the heavier full buckets and women returning the empty buckets to the water source, was typical in America at the time.

Another fire in 1923 damaged a dance pavilion, 100 feet of the boardwalk and 14 restaurants, destroying $15,000 worth of property (or about $287,000 in today’s dollars).

Tippett showed a slide with information from two insurance maps for the Twin Beaches area, one from 1930 and one from 1938.

“In 1930, you’ll see that there’s a Chesapeake Beach Volunteer Fire Department still,” Tippett said, “and now there’s a fire department listed in North Beach with 75 men. […] But by 1938, if you’ll notice, there’s no more Chesapeake Beach Volunteer Fire Department. Everything’s handled by North Beach. So from 1926, when the North Beach Volunteer Fire Department formally organizes, to 1930, there was still a volunteer fire department of some kind in Chesapeake Beach. I’m dying to get into some records somewhere and find out the story.”

Following another fire in January 1926, the modern NBVFD was organized on Feb. 5. The department received its state charter on Aug. 4 that same year.

Tippett closed his presentation by including details for future events this summer, closer to the official Aug. 4 centennial celebration. The rest of NBVFD’s history will be told at another lecture on Aug. 6 at the Twin Beaches branch of the Calvert Library. On Aug. 8, NBVFD will hold a parade and open house featuring a refurbished 1947 fire engine. From Aug. 18 to 23, the firehouse will also host an old-fashioned carnival, which Tippett said is a traditional and popular way for American volunteer fire departments to raise funds.

To learn more about NBVFD and the centennial anniversary, visit its website. You can watch Tippett’s full lecture below.

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