The North Beach Volunteer Fire Department will mark 100 years of service with a pair of centennial celebrations this week and next, opening with a Monday evening museum event before a parade and muster draws fire apparatus from across the region to North Beach on Aug. 8.
The Rod ‘N’ Reel Resort and the Chesapeake Beach Railway Museum will host a free “Night at the Museum” event Monday, Aug. 3, from 6 to 8 p.m. at the museum, 4155 Mears Ave. in Chesapeake Beach. The evening will feature a vintage fire truck on display, a special exhibit on the history of devastating local fires and early firefighting efforts, refreshments, entertainment and family-friendly activities. NBVFD Assistant Chief 1A John Tippett will be on hand to discuss the department’s history and answer questions about the vintage apparatus.
The larger celebration comes Aug. 8, when the town of North Beach hosts the NBVFD 100th Anniversary Parade and Muster from 3 to 4 p.m. The parade will bring modern and antique fire apparatus from departments across the region along the town’s traditional Christmas parade route before apparatus continues on to the NBVFD fire station at 8536 Bayside Road for an old-fashioned fire service muster, featuring historical displays, awards and a chance for the public to meet firefighters from throughout the area.
Intermittent road closures and traffic pattern changes will be in effect before 3 p.m., and the town is encouraging visitors to arrive early, follow posted detours and use designated parking shown on the event’s parade map. For those who can’t attend in person, the town will livestream the parade starting at 3 p.m. on its official YouTube channel.
“The North Beach Volunteer Fire Department has stood watch over our community for generations,” North Beach Mayor Michael “Mike” Benton said. “This centennial is an opportunity to honor the volunteers — past and present — whose dedication and sacrifice have protected our residents, businesses and visitors for the last 100 years.”
The department’s roots trace to a wave of serious fires that struck the Twin Beaches area in the early 1920s, including a March 1923 blaze at the Belvedere Hotel that drew a roughly 100-person bucket brigade before a Washington, D.C., fire truck could respond — a truck that was itself involved in a crash en route and never made it to the scene. After another fire in January 1926, close to 40 North Beach residents gathered that February to organize a formal department; 39 residents ultimately agreed to join, 34 as active members and five as associate members. The department received its official certificate of incorporation as a nonprofit on Aug. 4, 1926, becoming the first organized and chartered fire department in Calvert County. Local resident Dora West deeded the land for the department’s first station later that October.
The department’s equipment has evolved dramatically since those early years, when hand-held chemical extinguishers were stationed at street corners around town and volunteers relied on shouts of “fire!” rather than any formal alarm system. NBVFD purchased its first fire engine, a used 1925 Studebaker, in the late 1920s, and didn’t add ambulance service until the mid-1960s with a 1965 International Travel All. The department briefly oversaw a Dunkirk station, known as Company 5, after annexing it in 1973, before the two companies separated again in the early 1980s. That same year, the department leased land from the Calvert County Commissioners to build the Bayside Road station it still occupies today.
Tippett, who has spent three years researching the department’s history for a forthcoming book on NBVFD’s first century, shared some of that history in a lecture earlier this year as part of the Bayside History Museum’s winter lecture series, presented with the local Daughters of the American Revolution chapter and the Calvert Library. Tippett brings a five-decade career in the fire service to the project, including 35 years with the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue System, leadership of Maryland Task Force 1 during deployments to the Pentagon attack on Sept. 11, 2001, and Hurricane Katrina, and later roles with the Charleston Fire Department and the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. A follow-up talk on the department’s history is scheduled for Aug. 6 at the Twin Beaches branch of the Calvert Library, and NBVFD plans an old-fashioned firehouse carnival from Aug. 18 through 23, a traditional fundraising format for volunteer departments nationally.
Both the Night at the Museum event and the Aug. 8 parade and muster are free and open to the public. More information on the centennial parade, including registration for participating apparatus, is available by contacting NBVFD Assistant Chief John Tippett at 301-717-1691 or jtippett@northbeachfire.com.
