Beginning with the first factory in 1888, entrepreneurship combined with the railroad transformed Ridgely from a village into a town incorporated in 1896, with first town commissioners Sylvester Smith, T.W. Jones, F.P. Herr, T.L. Day, and J.T. Saulsbury. By 1912, this growth had produced 13 factories, 6 warehouses, 14 office buildings, and 35 other businesses, including stores, shops, and recreational venues. T.L. Day, Sing & Co. operated a five-acre plant on the southern edge of town next to the Delaware and Chesapeake Railway. In 1910, the Armour Company of Chicago chose Ridgely because of the large acreage of strawberries and railroad access for shipping, built two huge warehouses and ten five-room buildings for hired help, and seasonally needed over 1,000 workers, while Ridgely's total population that year was 943. Members of the First Growers Association and Exchange agreed to sell only high-quality berries that brought premium cash prices, and Ridgely berries became famous as the town became known as the Strawberry Capital of the Nation. Among the milestones in Ridgely's greatest growth were canning factories, a basket factory, a new railroad station, a shirt factory, an engineering and manufacturing company, a lumber yard, flouring mills, the Krantz Hotel, the first newspaper The Caroline Sun, the Bank of Ridgely, the Ridgely Crystal Ice Co., water works, the Volunteer Fire Company, the Ridgely Fruit Growers Association, ten miles of concrete pavements, an electric light plant, an agricultural high school, the Armour and Co. preserving plant, the Board of Trade, the Ridgely Creamery Co., a sewerage system with modern disposal plant, and the Marvel Beverage Co.