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The Bridge that Unites the Shores

By Anne McNulty

(photo by Joyce Plummer)

It’s not only a massive structure, this bridge that arches and curves out over the Chesapeake Bay, it’s poetry made of steel. Its towers, stretching up into the clouds, catch the rays of a pink-tinged sunset and shimmer under soft moonlight. A paean to human initiative and intellect, its graceful beauty moves the spirit.

Yet, often the spirit is all that’s moving, because cars aren’t. On a summer weekend frustrated motorists sit in idling vehicles, exhaust fumes polluting the muggy air. “It’s time to build another bridge,” they mutter as they edge in between semis and motorbikes.

Most aren’t old enough to remember when the first bridge went up, 56 years ago, or those days when the ferries ruled the Bay, Ocean City was a sleepy town, and the Eastern Shore region was geographically isolated.


The Long Wait
They say time and tide wait for no man, but men—and women—certainly waited for a bridge. For years they pondered a shorter way to connect the two shores. In 1907 Baltimore businessman and state senator Peter Campbell and others began planning a bridge that would accommodate trolleys. In 1918 there was talk of building a double-decker bridge that would carry both trolleys and trains. But the years rolled by and first the Great Depression and then World War II scuttled any bridge plans.

In 1919 the first ferries began crossing the Bay, and they continued to do so for the next 33 years.
It wasn’t until 1947 that Governor William Preston Lane Jr. and the General Assembly ordered the State Roads Commission to begin building a bridge at the Sandy Point Matapeake site, also the site of the ferry crossing, since it proved to be the most favorable one. The Army Corps of Engineers instructed the J.E. Greiner Engineering Company, which had been awarded the contract, to align the bridge at a 90-degree angle so that it could rest on favorable terrain and to enable the shipping channel traffic to pass under it.

A Unique Design
Eighty-four-year-old Walter E. Woodford Jr., state project engineer for the second span of the Bay Bridge, added years later, explains the design of the first one. “It’s a combination of five different bridge types,” he says. “They include short spans of approximately 100 feet, the plate girder spans, 400 feet truss spans, and a 780-foot cantilever truss span.” As you drive through this span’s network of steel you might feel like you’re passing through an Erector Set. The most imposing span is the 1600-foot suspension span, its two soaring towers holding up the two 14-inch-diameter cables, which are anchored on two concrete islands. These cables support the roadway.

“You can walk up those cables, and you can also climb up into those towers. I was never one for heights though,” says Woodford.


Building a Miracle
Building this bridge was the most difficult project the State ever attempted. At that time it was also the longest steel bridge in the world—4.03 miles. (Now it ranks #67) Could it be done? “Yes,” answered construction firms such as Langenfelder and Whiting and Turner. Bruce Sherman, J.E. Greiner’s chief engineer, agreed.

Yet it was a massive undertaking. They had to design a structure that could withstand 100 mph wind and also contract and expand with the temperature change. On a hot day the bridge is four feet longer than on a cold day.

The Substructure
On a January day in 1949 workers began shoveling up clumps of dirt at the western approach road—the first of 12,000 truckloads. In November of that year they began dredging the Bay bottom. Next workers steam-hammered huge steel piles spliced together in sections into the underlying mud and clay—some at a depth of 200 feet.

This formed the substructure that supports the reinforced concrete piers, which were constructed 10 months later. They, in turn, support the 354-foot suspension bridge towers and the smaller, cantilever bridge. “Men had to go down 80 feet in the piers’ metal casings, called cofferdams, and pump out the water. Only then could they pour the concrete,” says Woodward.

The Superstructure and Roadway
Soon it was time to begin building the steel frame of the bridge—the superstructure. By the end of 1950 the two suspension bridge towers were in place, as were the concrete anchorages. Then the huge truss sections, most of which had been assembled in Baltimore, had to be transported on barges and hoisted into place by cranes. They had to fit perfectly together, with no room for error.

“Putting those pieces together over a large body of water and setting them down on the piers, with the wind blowing all the time, was extremely difficult,” says Woodford.

In 1951, the cables were spun and set in place. Last, the roadway had to be built. “That was the hardest,” he says.

The Workers
What was it like to work on this bridge? Paul Clark recalls those days when his late father, Melvin Clark, helped build the roadway. “My dad was way up there—walking on the steel beams with only air and water beneath him. He had nothing to hold on to and no safety net under him. In fact there was no safety equipment at all. He’d crouch down on his hands and knees—wind whipping around him—and mark out where the wooden forms that would hold the poured concrete should be placed. The only time he got scared was when a new guy panicked and started crawling on the beams. Then Dad did the same thing.”

Clark recalls his father telling him about the men who riveted the finished truss sections together. “Without any safety belts or harnesses they climbed up the girders and, with air-hammers, pounded red-hot rivets, which had come straight out of a portable forge, into the trusses. Each rivet weighed about a pound. Now that took some strong men,” Clark remarks.

It also took some brave men, and one didn’t make it. In April 1952, 25-year-old steelworker Frank La Garry was working on erecting the cables. He climbed onto an elevator to reach his post on one of the 354-foot suspension towers. La Garry lost his footing when he missed a step from the elevator to the truss. He fell 197 feet to his death: he landed on the counterweight of the elevator.

After four years and 6.5 million hours of work the bridge was finally completed, at a cost of $45 million. By comparison, “It cost $70 million a few years ago just to repaint it,” says Woodward.

The Celebration
July 30, 1952, was a blazing hot day—90 degrees in Annapolis, 100 in Easton.
But that didn’t stop the 8,000 invited guests and the throngs of onlookers who turned out to celebrate their new bridge. The crowds cheered as Governor Theodore McKeldin and former Governor William Preston Lane passed by in their convertibles. The Bay swarmed with boats, and planes buzzed overhead. For six hours people fanned themselves while band music pulsated and politicians gave long-winded speeches.

People driving over the bridge climbed out of their cars and hung over the railings to wave down at the lumbering ferryboats whose passengers were waving up to them. The captains blasted the horns that signaled the end of an era for the ferries. It was the last day they would ever run. “My dad wasn’t too impressed with all the pomp and circumstance that day,” says Clark. He’d already run across the bridge more than 200 times in his beat-up ’39 Chevy pickup truck while he was working on the bridge.”



(right: By Tony Lewis Jr.)

The Traffic Begins
The following Sunday 16,920 cars zoomed across the bridge. Local historian and writer Nick Hoxter remembers his first impressions of that day’s traffic.

“General Custer asked, at the battle of Little Bighorn, ‘Where did all these Indians come from?’ We asked, ‘Where in hell did all these cars come from?’ We knew from that first week that someday they would have to build a second bridge. We knew life here would never be the same.”

Hoxter, whose father was a ferry mechanic, remembers the Governor Harry W. Nice, the Herbert R. O’Connor, and the Governor Emerson C. Harrington II sitting idle in their berths at Matapeake. “We would board them every afternoon and start the engines. Man, it was so sad to see them rusting away.”


Running the Bridge
Former Bridge Superintendent Lou Kelley was 12 years old when the bridge was built. He remembers how excited he was to see that mammoth structure being constructed and all the sections being put in place. “It was awesome to see those sections fit so perfectly.”

A few days before the official opening the Kent Island youngster decided to ride his bike across the almost completed bridge. Never mind about the barricades blocking it. He just lifted his bike up over the barriers and proceeded to pedal down the causeway up to the main suspension span.

“Man, it was so beautiful, I just had to get off my bike and watch the ships pass under. It was an awesome sight.” That was, until a long, black sedan pulled up in front of him and an imposing bridge official nabbed him and made him turn around and go back home. “I wish I had told him I lived in Annapolis,” Kelley says chuckling. “Then I could have gone the whole way across and taken the ferry back home.”

It turns out he had plenty of time to enjoy the bridge—40 years, to be exact.

Beginning as a patrolman, Kelley worked his way up to become superintendent of the Bay Bridge.
He remembers patrolling the bridge while on a police motorcycle. “There were times we directed traffic with both hands off the handlebars—trying to keep it moving. We also waved traffic on as we stood in cages bolted outside the railings. They should have built shoulders on that bridge.”

Kelley mentions all the accidents, which he maintains were always caused by driver error. “We had to help the injured and quickly get the vehicles off the roadway. During those days we handled up to 1,500 cars an hour.”

He recalls the terrible blizzard of 1960, when the clouds dumped heavy snow on the bridge and the Bay iced over. Ships managed to break through and then the ice started moving. “You could feel the bridge shaking from the pressure,” he says. During this storm and many others, bridge employees couldn’t get back home, and they spent the night. “We always kept food like Spam and soup in our lockers. We worked 24 hours a day to keep that bridge open, even though Route 50 was mostly closed. The toll collectors could sit inside the administration building and if a car came through, run out to collect the toll. No matter how bad the weather, our maintenance crew prided themselves on keeping the bridge open.”
When Kelley moved up through the ranks, his job entailed supervising the maintenance department. He recalls workers scrambling up beams and down columns as they completed inspections. Engineers were always monitoring the condition of the piers, cables, and cable housings. Divers went to the bottom of the Bay to take soundings, check the piles, and check the concrete cast cylinders. “We knew the heartbeat of that bridge,” Kelley says. “My heart was in that bridge, and it still is.”

In 1973 they built a second span to handle the increased traffic. Will there be a third? Only time will tell.
Eastern Shore resident Anne McNulty loves driving over the bridge when there’s no traffic.

Tags: Uniting The Shores

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