‘It Was A Real Disaster Area’: Hurricane Gloria Remembered 30 Years Later

OCEAN CITY — Thirty years ago this weekend, Ocean City Councilman Dennis Dare was a young city engineer for the town of Ocean City.

The year was 1985, and Dare and other town officials got word that a Cape Verde-hurricane called Gloria had taken a sharp turn in the Atlantic Ocean and was churning with increasing force toward the East Seaboard.

When the hurricane passed by on Sept, 27, it left behind significant damage including the destruction of the majority of the resort’s famous Boardwalk. Gloria quickly went into the record books as one of Ocean City’s benchmark storms.

I sat down with Dare, who spent eight years as city engineer and 21 years as city manager, to look back on the experience and explore the ways that Gloria changed Ocean City.

More