TOMORROW'S ROADS TODAY - Maryland State Highway ...

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As the SRC constructed the Baltimore Beltway, a new toll road was programmed for
design and construction, the Harbor Tunnel Thruway (Figure 11). The seventeen mile long
highway and four lane tunnel in two tubes, was proposed in 1954, construction began in 1955,
and was completed in November 1957. At the time of its construction, “the tunnel was the
longest twin-tube trench-type tunnel in the world. The prefabricated tunnel sections were sunk
in an open trench.” 53 The highway portion has 55 bridges, which are metal girder or
stringer/multi-beam or girder. All were constructed in one building campaign in 1957, along
with one K-Truss Bridge over the B&O Railroad. The Harbor Tunnel Thruway connected to the
Baltimore-Washington Parkway and US 1 on the southwest side of the City, and on the east side
connected with US 40, providing a bypass of downtown Baltimore for travelers going north or
south of the city.
Bypasses
As part of the Twelve-Year Program, the SRC studied various towns in Maryland to
determine how best to move traffic through the CBDs of Denton, Hagerstown, Frederick,
Annapolis and Salisbury. In general the SRC chose to bypass the downtown areas by building
new highways outside the town limits, where land was less expensive and less populated.
Depending on the amount of traffic, some of the bypasses, such as Glen Burnie, were designed
with limited access, while others have at-grade, signalized intersections, such as Berlin. In the
case of the Pocomoke City, the US 13 Bypass eliminated an at-grade railroad crossing of the
Pennsylvania Railroad on the east side of town.
In Worcester County, US 113 was a colonial post road that paralleled the western shore
of Sinepuxent Bay and passed through Berlin. In 1939, the SRC District 1 Engineer
recommended that US 113 from Selbyville, Delaware through Berlin and Snow Hill to the
Virginia line should be modernized due to increased traffic. Starting in 1955, the SRC
constructed a two-lane undivided highway between the Virginia and Delaware borders bypassing
Snow Hill, Newark and Berlin to the east.
Although not formally noted as a bypass, US 240 (I-270) did bypass both Rockville and
Frederick. That highway’s construction helped spur a different kind of development in the mid-
1950s when the federal government began to seek locations outside the District of Columbia for
the scientific and intelligence agencies such as the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the
National Security Agency. In studying some fifty possible locations for the AEC headquarters,
its General Manager noted that a dairy farm in Germantown was located next to a “beautiful new
highway.” When the AEC headquarters was dedicated in November 1958, President Eisenhower
flew between the White House and Germantown but on the return trip, drove back to the White
House from Germantown on US 240. 54 The distance of the AEC headquarters form Washington
ensured that it would be a safe haven for the federal government in case of a nuclear attack
(Figure 12).
53 URS Corporation for Maryland Transportation Authority, “Maryland Interstate Highway Section 106 Exemption
Resource Report, Statement of Significance,” 10/1/2009.
54 Anne E. Bruder, Atomic Energy Commission MIHP No. M:19-41, MIHP form on file with Maryland Historical
Trust, Crownsville, MD, December 18, 2006.