At the turn of the 20th century...

...Maryland was a very different place than today. In the early 1900s, there were 14,481 miles of roads in Maryland of which 13,118 were made of dirt, 890 were stone, 225 were gravel and 250 were oyster shells. When the General Assembly formed the State Roads Commission (SRC) in 1908, its task was daunting but straightforward – build a statewide highway system in seven years and “get farmers out of the mud.” The agency’s specific seven-year plan was to connect all of Maryland’s county seats with paved roads.

By 1917, the wisdom of forming the State Roads Commission had become clear. Maryland’s roads had become the envy of other states and a national model. Motorists found they could move from one part of the state to another with confidence that they would get there. And Maryland found itself a leader in the construction of bridges, due to the many bodies of water its roads encountered.

Through the roaring twenties and depressing thirties, the SRC’s commitment to the road system didn’t flag. In the 30s alone, the commission built 250 bridges across Maryland’s many waterways.

The advent of World War II in the 1940s slowed progress on the state road system, but planted the seeds for today’s modern interstate system when Dwight Eisenhower streaked down the Autobahn in pursuit of German troops. That complemented his experience in the cross-country convoy of 1919, convincing Eisenhower of the need for a standardized, four lane interstate system. The result was the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, a law establishing national funding, design and construction standards for a uniform interstate highway system.

True to its tradition as a leader in the development of modern highway systems, Maryland completed I-695 (the Baltimore Beltway) in 1962. It was the first beltway constructed under the 1956 Highway Act. It was also a model that many large cities followed, including Washington, D.C., not long thereafter.

By the end of President Eisenhower's second term in 1960, the nation’s Interstate Highway System was 25 percent complete. In 1961, Congress raised gas and other excise taxes to complete the system. Although the Interstate Highway System long ago met its original goal, it has kept growing due to popular demand, and presently comprises about 46,000 miles across 49 states. (Only Alaska has no highways designated as part of the Interstate system.)

In 1970, when Maryland was led by governor Marvin Mandel, the state acted to separate its transportation needs from political patronage by forming a cabinet-level position, the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT). This new post brings previously separate, transportation-oriented agencies together, in recognition of the symbiotic relationship of all transportation modes that serve the state.

Under the aegis of MDOT and led by its first Secretary, Harry Hughes – later to become Governor – the State Highway Administration took over the road-building function of the old State Roads Commission.

Through the 1970s until today, the State Highway System has contributed to Maryland’s enviable economic growth and quality of life in ways large and small. Today, the state can be proud of a network of roads and bridges – and a system built to maintain that excellence – that typically performs so well that most of us take it for granted.

America's Interstate Highway System also continues to define America in a variety of ways.

It has hastened the growth of the suburbs, changed our view of travel from one of “distance-covered” to one of “time-elapsed,” and served as an invaluable support to the American economy and ability to do business. It has also contributed to our self-concept as a nation of travelers with the individual freedom to pick up at a moment's notice and move on to the next adventure.

As one of the seven wonders of modern America, the Interstate Highway System has simultaneously allowed us to shrink our nation’s distances while expanding our horizons.

A preview of the celebration of the last 100 years.

Maryland’s travelers in 1708 were a hardy bunch. They had to be. Their options were limited to waterways and a few dirt roads (when they weren't flooded out) that connected towns and markets.

About 100 years later, travelers’ choices were little better. Private enterprise provided the state with somewhat smoother surfaces that consisted of rocks and crushed stone and oyster shells, sand, gravel and even wooden planks. These “turnpikes” however, divided Marylanders into two kinds of citizens; those who could afford to travel on turnpikes and those who couldn't.

Jump forward another 100 years to 1908 and the traveler might be amazed at how little Maryland's roads have advanced. Railroads dominate, but not everyone wants to go where they do. The state’s growing numbers of automobile owners are not happy with Maryland’s motley collection of public roads and turnpikes. As it turns out, 1908 is a watershed year for Maryland's highways. The State Roads Commission is established, with responsibility for planning a hard-surface road system, and it plans to use automobile registration fees as a means to do it.

Today, the State Roads Commission has evolved into the State Highway Administration (SHA) and a part of the Maryland Department of Transportation, with a mission and responsibilities that have grown enormously.

To celebrate our state’s reputation for advanced highways and highway systems and our origins as the State Roads Commission, SHA has commissioned a series of complementary public outreach efforts, including a television documentary, SHA reunions and a commemorative book that details the colorful history of highways in general, and Maryland’s roadways in particular.

On the following page views, you’ll see a preview of the highlights and some of the interesting tidbits you’ll find in that book, planned for release in Fall 2008. Despite all the changes of the last hundred years, one thing hasn’t changed – your state highway system’s remarkable tradition as a progressive, thoughtful organization with an overriding concern for the safety and convenience of Maryland’s motorists.

What’s ahead for the next ten years – and the next hundred?

As we have outgrown our capacity as a nation to “build our way out of congestion,” new ways of thinking about transportation as well as new approaches to highway building and management are coming to the fore. This is particularly true in Maryland, where so many innovations in highway development have their roots.

Our state’s groundbreaking “CHART” (Coordinated Highways Action Response Team) is a real-life manifestation of our attitude that views all users of highways as our customers. CHART is a joint effort of the State Highway Administration, the Maryland Transportation Authority and the Maryland State Police. While ultimately this customer-service oriented approach is geared toward driver safety, there is a wide variety of benefits that are already having an impact on Maryland’s driving public.

For instance, our Emergency Traffic Patrols regularly assist stranded motorists, help to clear roadways and manage incidents.

These same patrols have been credited with reducing incident-related delays by 35 percent, leading to a correspondingly dramatic reduction in secondary incidents.

Our Statewide Operations Center (SOC) – the first and only true statewide center – is a state-of-the-art command and control facility that manages all CHART functions; gathers and analyzes real-time traffic and weather information; and offers both automated traffic management responses and recommended actions to system operators.

Regional Traffic Operations Centers handle a variety of daily operations and handle local needs by deploying resources in response to incidents and coordinating with the State Operations Center.

During severe weather such as snow, hurricanes or flooding, the State Operations Center also functions as an Emergency Operations Center, determining when to send out salt trucks and managing maintenance resources. For maximum efficiency, SOC utilizes information that is collected and distributed electronically by sensors embedded in roadways and weather towers along highways.

SHA and CHART continue to refine and expand the CHART system, with the goal of making it the first fully integrated intelligent transportation system in the nation. In the ultimate vision of CHART, you the motorist will control your travel through advanced knowledge of routing information and traffic conditions both before your trip and during it.

Our goal for the next ten years and for the foreseeable future is to provide Maryland's motorists with the safest, most driver friendly highway system possible.

The view from 1958.

Fifty years ago, the State Roads Commission published The History of Road Building in Maryland (1958). In the concluding pages of that book, the author related a series of predictions made by the editors. Some of them are remarkably prescient. Others go to show that even the best guesses about the future are just that – guesses. See what you think!

“In this age of electronics, satellites and shots at the moon, one would be rash indeed to predict the types of vehicles or the design of the roads in the next fifty years.

Some foresee a more general use of aircraft for the longer trips and helicopters for the shorter ones, thus lessening our dependence on roads.

On the other hand, a group of editors recently made these predictions for the year 2000: Expressways not only will multiply but will be double-decked with built-in heating devices to keep off ice and snow. Duplicate sets of such roads will appear – one for pleasure cars and the other for business vehicles. Cities will be free of above-ground traffic. Workers will use fast transit lines below the surface to get about the city and out to the clusters of spacious and efficient homes which will replace today’s suburbs.

Others predict accident-proof cars – vehicles equipped with radar devices that will stop them before a collision occurs. And some see a future requiring neither roads nor cars. Transportation, they say, will be by nuclear-powered wings, on the order of those used by Icarus but with far superior qualities.”

Major milestones in Maryland’s modern road system

1899 – “Object lesson” (demonstration) roads built at Timonium Fairgrounds to show off road-building techniques and performance.

1908 – Maryland State Roads Commission is formed, with the goal of connecting the state’s county seats with macadamized roads. By 1915, the commission has reached its goal.

1910 – Westminster’s Main Street is host to an object lesson in road paving. Bituminous macadam costs $10,588. per mile. Labor costs $1.50 for a ten-hour day.

1910 – The “Gold Mine” Bridge over the Susquehanna at Havre de Grace begins conversion for use by automobiles from a single-track, wrought iron railroad bridge originally built in 1873. Despite repeated conversions that made several contractors rich, (hence the name “The Gold Mine Bridge”) it is eventually replaced so it can handle the taller, wider trucks that were to come along several decades later.

1910 – Nanticoke River Bridge is begun at Sharpstown between Dorchester and Wicomico counties. Its steel-construction swinging draw span is operated at first by hand and later, by electric motor.

1911 – Connecticut Avenue utilizes a 3,300 foot strip between Bradley Lane and the District Line to experiment with water-bound macadam asphaltic concrete.

1912 – Construction begins on the 28-mile long Baltimore Washington Boulevard. Total amount appropriated for the task was $90,000.

1914 – Severn River Bridge construction begins.

1915 – Maryland prepares standard plans for all bridges up to 36 feet.

1915 – The “completion” of the State Highway System is declared, after the State Roads Commission announces that it has met the original goal of the SRC to connect all of Maryland’s county seats with paved roads.

1917 – Construction is completed on the Hanover Street Bridge over Middle Branch, replacing a wooden structure on Light Street. The new bridge connects Baltimore with Brooklyn in Anne Arundel County.

1924 – The concrete and steel Severn River Bridge is dedicated. Its 22-foot roadway is 1,850 feet long and flanked by two sidewalks.

1927 – The Robert Crain Highway is dedicated. It’s the first road on a totally new alignment built by the State Roads Commission.

1933 – The Choptank River Bridge opens.

1940 – The Susquehanna River Toll Bridge (US 40) is dedicated. It consists of two 12-1/2 foot lanes in each direction and a vertical clearance of 17 feet.

1940 – Rte. 40, four lanes of divided highway between Baltimore and the Delaware line, opens for business.

1940 – The Potomac River Toll Bridge opens in December, providing a horizontal clearance of 135 feet over the main ship channel of the Potomac. It is rededicated as the Harry W. Nice Memorial Bridge on April 15, 1968.

1940 – MD Route 2 from Baltimore to Annapolis is dedicated. It’s the first divided highway in the state.

1947 – Governor William Preston Lane Jr. presents a five-year program that includes $200 million for a Baltimore-Washington Expressway, a Baltimore-Harrisburg Expressway and the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. He is rewarded for his visionary plan by being turned out of office at the next election, having been labeled a “spendthrift.”

1947 – Sandy Hood bridge across the Potomac opens.

1952 – The Chesapeake Bay Bridge (later rededicated as the William Preston Lane Jr. Memorial Bridge in 1967) opens. It is the world’s largest continuous over-water steel structure, linking Maryland’s eastern and western shores. It spans 4.35 miles from shore to shore, with a vertical clearance of 186 feet to accommodate shipping traffic.

1953 – Governor McKeldin presents his 12-year plan to the State Legislature. It includes plans for beltways around Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

1955 – Dualization, the adding of a median in-between opposing traffic lanes, is completed on US 40, US 301 and US 13.

1956 – The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 is signed by President Eisenhower.

1956 – The Baltimore-Harrisburg Expressway is dedicated, changing its name from US 111 to I-83.

1957 – The Baltimore Harbor Tunnel is dedicated, effectively decreasing truck traffic on Baltimore’s streets by 40 percent.

1961 – The Woodrow Wilson Bridge across the Potomac is dedicated.

1962 – The first section of the Baltimore Beltway is dedicated. It is the first section of the first beltway in the nation constructed under the Federal Aid Highway Act, and a model for cities across the United States.

1963 – The Northeastern Expressway, one of the first completed sections of I-95, is dedicated by President John F Kennedy. It is the first and so far, the only time a president has officiated at the opening of a highway. It is among President Kennedy’s final acts in office. He is assassinated days later. The highway is later dedicated as the John F. Kennedy Memorial Expressway.

1964 – The Capital Beltway opens.

1967 – The Chesapeake Bay Bridge is rededicated as the Governor William Preston Lane Jr. Memorial Bridge, in honor of his championing of the project from its inception.

1968 – I-70 is dedicated. It had been planned to intersect Baltimore but makes it only to the city line, cut short by community activists intent on preserving their neighborhoods.

1971 – The ribbon is cut on I-95 from the Capital Beltway (I-495) to the Baltimore Beltway (I-695).

1972 – Second Chesapeake Bay Bridge span opens, a near mirror image of the first.

1977 – The Francis Scott Key Bridge is dedicated, dubbed the “buckle” of the beltway.

1995 – The Severn River Bridge II opens.

2006 – The first of two new Woodrow Wilson Bridge spans is opened. The previous structure, built in 1961, is imploded.

The old bridge had been responsible for so many backups that a contest was held to determine who had the worst commuting story of its many thousands of daily commuters. The winner was Dan Ruefly of Accoceek, Maryland. He got to blow up the old bridge.