Qualla: Baltimore-Washington Parkway

Baltimore-Washington Parkway: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0. Driving north on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway feels different from any other commuter road in the region, and the difference is mostly trees. No commercial trucks. No billboards. A wide grassy median that the National Park Service kept thick with hardwoods. Brown park-service signs lettered in Clarendon typeface where green guide signs would be on an interstate. The parkway runs roughly forty miles from the edge of Washington, D.C., near Cheverly to downtown Baltimore. For most of its length below Fort Meade, it was, until very recently, one of the longer roads in the United States still maintained by the National Park Service rather than a state transportation department. The split personality - parkway in the south, ordinary state route in the north - is the result of a decision made when the road opened in stages between 1950 and 1954.

Image: Famartin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Baltimore-Washington Parkway: Built for the Cold War

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NPS, Public domain. Pierre L'Enfant sketched a parkway-like link between Baltimore and Washington in his 1791 plan for the federal city, but the road didn't take shape until the 1940s. By then U.S. Route 1, the existing two-lane connection between the cities, was one of the deadliest roads in the wo...

Image: NPS | Public domain

Baltimore-Washington Parkway: Two Roads in One

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0. The parkway that opened in 1954 was administered in two halves. The state of Maryland built and maintains the northern segment, which extends from the Baltimore Beltway south to MD 175 near Fort Meade. The National Park Service maintains the southern segment, from MD 175 down to ...

Image: Famartin | CC BY-SA 4.0

Baltimore-Washington Parkway: A Federal Corridor

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ilovecollegepark, CC0. Look at what the parkway touches and you see the federal government laid out along its length like beads on a string. Goddard Space Flight Center built its own interchange in 1965. Fort Meade, with the National Security Agency inside it, sits at the parkway's midpoint. The Univer...

Image: Ilovecollegepark | CC0

Baltimore-Washington Parkway: Slow Deterioration, Slow Repair

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DCwom (talk) (Uploads), Public domain. The Park Service segment was already known as one of the most dangerous roads in the NPS system by the 1960s, and proposals to hand it to Maryland for full freeway reconstruction surfaced repeatedly - in 1963, in 1968 with an Interstate 295 designation that was granted and then w...

Image: DCwom (talk) (Uploads) | Public domain

Baltimore-Washington Parkway: The Wooded Strip

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jonathunder, Public domain. What makes the parkway worth driving, despite the potholes and the politics, is the median. The Park Service kept the right-of-way wooded, with mature trees screening the parkway from the surrounding sprawl. From the air the corridor reads as a band of green slicing northeast acr...

Image: Jonathunder | Public domain