d more services. The Ocean View Post Office established a branch in Bethany Beach in 1904. A town newspaper, the Bethany Herald, began publication in 1904; later renamed the Bethany Booster, its name eventually was switched back to Bethany Herald, and it published until the late 1980s. The boardwalk was reconstructed in 1905, a United States Lifesaving Service station began operations in the town in 1907, and the Town of Bethany Beach was incorporated in 1909. The Bethany Beach School was established for students in grades one through six; after the sixth grade they had to attend Lord Baltimore School in Ocean View. The boardwalk underwent yet another reconstruction in 1912.
When the U.S. Lifesaving Service merged with the United States Revenue Cutter Service to form the United States Coast Guard in 1915, the town's lifesaving station became a Coast Guard station. The Delaware National Guard established a summer training camp just north of town in the early 1920s. The Ringler Theater, which showed movies and hosted dance parties, opened on the boardwalk in 1923; generally considered to be the first commercial enterprise on the boardwalk, it became one of the town's major attractions. A privately-owned electric lighting plant began operations in 1924, lighting the town hall and street lamps; in 1926, the town bought the plant and began garbage collection. The town's lone bowling alley opened in 1930 and became a popular social attraction, The first restaurant on the boardwalk that was not part of a hotel opened in 1933 and stood until destroyed by a fire in 1953. Bethany Beach's first tennis court was completed in the mid-1930s. A dirt road between Rehoboth Beach and Bethany Beach, the first road between the two towns, opened in 1934.
The Quiet Years were not without dramatic events. Shipwrecks had occurred along the Delaware coast for centuries, and were not uncommon in Bethany Beach's area even in the early 20th century. A 1920 storm destroyed some
