William Randolph Hearst would try anything to boost his newspapers' circulation, offering his subscribers racehorses, gold coins, fabricated stories about starving orphans and yellow journalism that ignited the Spanish-American War.
But the scheme hatched by his Washington Herald was so outrageous that he fired the publisher responsible for it. The Herald built a utopian, all-white summer colony north of Annapolis, used its front page to sell lots in "Herald Harbor" and required those buying land to subscribe to the newspaper.
The quirky colony of bungalows has been swallowed by suburbia over the years. And it may lose the last relic of its strange past tomorrow, when Anne Arundel County considers whether to rezone its marina and beach so a high-tech company executive can turn them into his home.
Thomas W. Ruff is fighting history, with some residents arguing that the beach should remain as open to the public as it has been since the 1920s.
That was when the Herald Harbor Club drew crowds from Washington and Baltimore for sailing, dancing, boxing matches, moonlit banquets, greyhound races and gamblingwith one-armed bandits.
At stake is a golden crescent of sand in a waterfront community with piers for those wealthy enough to buy them but little beach access for those who live even a block inland.
"People here in Herald Harbor are at least 30 years behind the times," says John Lloyd, cashier at the Herald Harbor Inn general store.
"It's strange, quiet, friendly for the most part. We had a community beach until it was bought by a private homeowner.
"People are very upset about that."
Little Coney Island
Ruff says his beach was never public and complains that he has been subjected to the kind of sleazy attacks made famous by Hearst's newspapers.
"The history of this place is just spectacular. It was Maryland's little Coney Island," says Ruff. "But now it's had its time, and it's time to move on.
"By the time I bought this property, it was a hellhole. There was trash on the beach and kudzu growing everywhere."
Ruff notes that the clubhouse he hopes to convert into a home for his wife and twin 4-year-old daughters is not even the original.
The real Herald Harbor clubhouse -- which had a ballroom, stage and restaurant -- was condemned and replaced in 1985 because it had fallen into neglect.
Today the beach club is a vinyl-sided restaurant with a stunning view of the Severn River but a sign that warns: "Private Property. Violators Will Be Prosecuted."
Down a flight of wooden stairs on a kudzu-covered bluff is a volleyball net sagging beside a beach.
A pier zigzags into the misty bay, bits of crab shell on its rotting planks. Weeds sprout through the foundation of a bathhouse where sun worshipers once shimmied into wool swimming trunks.
"The club followed the legend of the newspaper," Ruff says. "Both went bankrupt."
Child of circulation wars
The history of the Herald Harbor Club is rooted in the newspaper wars of the nation's capital after the turn of the century.
The Washington Herald was founded in 1906, and by the 1920s it was locked in a ferocious circulation battle with the Washington Post and three other dailies.
It was a dark era in journalism.
In July 1919, the Post helped spark a race riot in which 40 people were killed. It ran a front-page story decrying alleged "recent attacks on women by Negroes" and issued a call to white vigilantes to fight back, according to Carol Felsenthal's book, "Power, Privilege and the Post."
Money-making scheme
The Herald was not free of questionable behavior.
It was a populist, xenophobic rag that splashed partisan editorials across its front page and proudly touted the slogan "America First!" above an eagle on its masthead.
"Wall Street Owns G.O.P.," shouted one headline from 1924.
The newspaper was losing a half-million dollars a year by then. Trying to stave off bankruptcy, the paper's publisher and circulation manager concocted a scheme. The paper bought 460 acres of hilly peach orchards 5 miles north of the Naval Academy.
The Herald used front-page news stories to sell the lots.
The plan was to earn a profit off the real estate deals and offer low prices for the 25-foot-wide lots only to those who agreed to subscribe to the newspaper.
On the morning of Sunday, May 24, the Herald published a banner headline: "Herald Harbor Plans Announced!"
A place for the family
The newspaper enticed readers with descriptions of a utopian summer colony for the paper's working-class "family," where they could chat about the news as they swam, sailed and danced in a waterfront ballroom.
The Herald proclaimed that its utopia would be "of the people, for the people and by the people."
But not all people.
"We propose to keep it clean and respectable and free from offenses against the tastes of refined families. This particular club and colony is for white people," the paper wrote.
Within two days, the Herald claimed it had sold 2,000 lots. That money was being used to pay off other Herald real estate debts.
When Hearst heard about the scheme, he fired the publisher and circulation manager and said he had no interest in real-estate speculation.
Project rejected
On June 12, 1924, the Herald ran a clarification: "Herald Harbor Company is Not A Hearst Newspaper Project."
For Hearst to terminate his publisher, Rhey Snodgrass, he must have considered it a scandal. Hearst himself was famous for wild circulation-boosting schemes.
His San Francisco Examiner in the 1890s published a heart-rending tale of an orphan boy named McGinty who struggled to survive yet went to extraordinary ends to care for his two younger brothers.
Readers flooded the newspaper with sympathetic letters, and Hearst's own wife was so moved that she donated money for "food and clothing for the youngsters."
But the McGintys never got the money because they did not exist, according to Ben Procter's book, "William Randolph Hearst: The Early Years."
When the U.S. battleship Maine blew up and sank in Havana harbor on Feb 15., 1895, Hearst's New York Journal published invented "proof" that a Spanish mine had killed the 266 sailors.
The lie helped to propel the United States into the Spanish-American War.
Hurt by the Depression, Hearst sold the Washington Herald in 1936 to the family that owned the Chicago Tribune.
In 1939, the new owner merged the Herald with the Washington Times to make the Washington Times-Herald, which closed after the Washington Post bought it in 1954.
Community thrives
But the Anne Arundel town built by the Herald lived on after the newspaper died.
The community boomed under new ownership in the 1920s and 1930s, with the club building a merry-go-round and boardwalk.
But in 1952, the opening of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge made the Eastern Shore more popular for tourists.
The club also suffered after the state passed a law in 1965 phasing out slot machines, according to Gloria Ryan Spence, who wrote a history of Herald Harbor.
Recreation association
A year later, owners of the Harbor Club sold the property to a group of residents who called themselves the Herald Harbor Recreation Association.
After the decaying clubhouse was torn down in 1985, the association borrowed $500,000 to build the vinyl-sided club building that stands today.
But the group failed to persuade enough people to pay the annual dues, even though lots of local residents jumped the fences to use what some regarded as a community beach.
"There are a number of people who think of this as community property -- but they have no right to feel that way," said Spence's husband, James H. Spence, a 70-year-old retired aerospace engineer who lives next to the beach.
New owner buys in
Ruff signed a contract to buy the property in March 1996. Residents tried to collect enough signatures to create a tax district to buy the beach for community use, but they fell 100 signatures short.
Ruff is asking the county Board of Appeals this week to rezone the 4 acres from a commercial marine designation to residential property.
He notes that he is supported in his effort by the local community association, which does not want a loud bar and marina on the property.
One neighbor who supports the end of the beach's life as a public place is Mildred L. Kepner, 75, who sold hot dogs and soda at the club during the 1930s.
"When I was 10 to 15 years old, I worked at the beach and it was just wonderful," says Kepner. "But over the years, it went downhill.
"You don't have anything there now. Now all you've got is a bunch of idiots fighting over something that's gone."