Historic National Road - Maryland

Historic National Road - Maryland

Parks Directory of the United States / National Scenic Byways

Address: c/o Maryland Scenic Byways
State Highway Administration - 707 North Calvert Street
Baltimore, MD 21202
Phone: 410-545-8637;
Web: www.sha.state.md.us/exploremd/oed/scenicByways/BywaysProgram.asp Description: America's first interstate highway, the National Road was built to to link the people and cities along the Eastern seaboard to those on the frontiers west of the Allegheny Mountains. Authorized by Congress in 1806, construction of the road began in Cumberland, Maryland in 1811. The road reached Vandalia, then the Illinois state capitol, in 1839 and later was completed to the Illinois border at East Saint Louis, opening a link to the water route of the Mississippi.The Maryland section of the byway offers access to the Blue Ridge Mountains, the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore, the C&O Canal, the 40,000-acre Green Ridge State Forest, and a number of cities including Baltimore, Frederick, Ellicott City, Hagerstown, and Cumberland.
Legth: 170 miles (Maryland); 824 miles (entire route). Start/Endpoint: The east/west route runs from Baltimore, Maryland, to the Mississippi River at the Eads Bridge in East Saint Louis, Illinois. It crosses six states: Maryland, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The Maryland section of the road runs from the Inner Harbor in Baltimore west to the Pennsylvania state line near Keysers Ridge, including sections of Alt US 40 and MD 144. Designation/Year: All-American Road (2002).

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See other parks in Maryland.