A destructive nor'easter known as the Ash Wednesday Storm of 1962 struck the area from March 6 to 8, 1962. Delaware's Atlantic coast experienced severe damage from very high tides and waves more than 40 feet (12 meters) high breaking on its beaches. In South Bethany, the storm destroyed 37 oceanfront homes. The 1962 storm gave a new impetus to incorporation, because as an unincorporated community South Bethany could not receive federal funding to recover from the disaster. The Delaware General Assembly rebuffed the initial efforts to incorporate the community after the storm, claiming that its tiny year-round population disqualified it from incorporation. The assembly eventually did pass an incorporation bill, which the governor of Delaware, Charles L. Terry, Jr., signed in December 1965. In the first public referendum in South Bethany on incorporation, held in June 1966, voters decisively rejected it. But in 1969 another referendum on the matter won, and on June 18, 1969, Governor Russell W. Peterson signed a bill providing for incorporation of the community as the Town of South Bethany. Elections for town offices soon took place, and James "Jim" Cleveland was elected as the town's first mayor. At the time, South Bethany had 240 houses and 496 property owners, although its year-round population consisted of just 15 families.