This 1912 photo shows pound fishermen on the beach in Ocean City. The horse helped pull the boat up on the beach and took baskets of fish netted offshore to the railroad spur that ran south from S. Division Street.

A rough and dangerous job, pound fishing required the men to row through the surf as the boats were launched from the beach in the days before the Inlet. The nets were stretched between poles sunk in the ocean floor a mile or more offshore and were dragged into the boat by hand. Pound fishing ceased to exist here when the Inlet was created in August 1933.

Photo courtesy of Julia Purnell Museum