communicated with the Christian Missionary Society, and in September 1902 organized a meeting in Washington, D.C., which led to lengthy negotiations about putting Bethany Beach on a firm financial footing. The negotiations dragged on until 1903, when six Pittsburgh-area investors agreed to buy all of the Bethany Beach Improvement Company's stock, selling three shares to a Delaware resident so that there would be at least some local ownership. This put the company on a firm financial footing and allowed the development of Bethany Beach to resume. The Christian Missionary Society eventually restored its endorsement of Bethany Beach, and summer programs modeled on the Chatauqua movement began in the town, meeting with modest success. Soon, the Bethany Beach Improvement Company dug a well to provide the town with fresh water. In 1903, the company completed the Tabernacle and built a surface-level boardwalk along the beach. The "Quiet Years" Longtime residents and regular visitors came to refer to Bethany Beach's history prior to the early 1950s as the "Quiet Years." Despite the plans of the town's founders to build one, no railroad ever came to Bethany Beach because traffic was insufficient to make such a railroad profitable, so visitors typically had to travel by train to Baltimore, Maryland, spend the night there, then travel by boat across the Chesapeake Bay to the Delmarva Peninsula and by train across the peninsula to Rehoboth Beach. Until 1910, they then had to take the steamer Atlantic across Rehoboth Bay and Indian River Bay to Ocean View, and then travel by horsedrawn carriage to Bethany Beach. On July 8, 1910, the Loop Canal was completed in Bethany Beach, allowing the motorboat Allie May—replaced in 1912 by the motorboat Helen Marie II—to dock at the town itself. Even with this improvement, however, the trip to Bethany Beach was uncomfortable and exhausting and from anywhere outside Delaware took at least a full day; from Pittsburgh it took two. Bethany Beach's remote location meant that most beachgoers preferred to visit Rehoboth Beach to the north or Ocean City, Maryland, to the south, both of which they could reach directly by train. The small population of permanent residents of and regular visitors to Bethany Beach came to know one another well, and the town remained a quiet place that contrasted with the busier and more crowded atmosphere of Rehoboth Beach and Ocean City. Throughout the Quiet Years, it was unusual