The four-mile long Chesapeake Bay Bridge is one of the most iconic stretches of U.S. Route 50’s 3,073 miles.
Maryland’s Historic & Iconic Roads Article Series- Coast to Coast: From Ocean City beaches to California sunshine, Route 50 traverses America
In 1997, Time magazine devoted an entire issue to the road they called the “Backbone of America.” Reporters followed the road from its most eastern terminus in Ocean City, Maryland, through 12 states, across the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the Great Basin, to Sacramento, California. Their mission…to discover along the way “what is holding America together and what is pulling it apart.” The chosen road was U.S. Route 50—the very road that wraps around our state capital, Annapolis, and is a straight highway from ocean to ocean across middle America. Of it, author William Least Heat-Moon wrote, “For the unhurried, this little-known highway is the best national road across the middle of the United States.”
U.S. Route 50 was officially named so in 1926. Its first route was designed from Wadsworth, Nevada, to Annapolis, Maryland, but would soon extend from Sacramento, California, to Ocean City, Maryland—a full 3,073 miles across the USA. Before it became U.S. Route 50, however, it was known by monikers such as the Northwest Turnpike and the Midland Trail. Further back in the 1700s, parts of the route were surveyed by George Washington. It was known simply as a wilderness trail, a wagon trail, and the way west.
In the early 1900s, shortly after the creation of the automobile, America did not have a road network. It had a railroad network. The new auto invention was viewed as a toy for the rich, and not worthy of spending one’s money on. Roads from one town to another were open to bicycle and stagecoach travel, often sponsored by banks and private organizations, and given names such as the Lancaster Pike, Liberty, and Lincoln Highway (one of the first transcontinental highways).
Henry Ford’s revolutionary automobile and its mass manufacturing would spur the United States to develop a national highway system to accommodate the rapid increase in auto travel.
A sign in the Nevada desert denotes rural Route 50 as “The Loneliest Road in America.”
But by 1925, Henry Ford and his car company had proven the auto skeptic wrong, and 250 named highways soon crisscrossed the country. It was a confusing non-network. Though there was talk among states and federal agencies for years about creating a national system, it wasn’t until Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency in the 1930s that an interstate highway system began to come to fruition.
The Interstate Highway System eventually became reality with the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 and signed into law by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Though some viewed losing the uniquely named highways as a historic loss, the new number system would shape the nation for the 20th century. It linked named highways into continuous routes and, for the first time, set standards for road design. Today, although we see cars everywhere, roads cover only one percent of the U.S. land area according to the Federal Highway Administration.
But what about U.S. Route 50, which began as a cross-country route from Wadsworth to Annapolis? The town of Wadsworth was named for a Civil War general killed in the Battle of the Wilderness in 1864. It was a major railroad town situated on the Truckee River. After 40 miles of desert, Wadsworth was a preferred stop along the Lincoln Highway, located near Lake Tahoe, as well as Pyramid Lake on the Paiute Reservation. In 1867, Central Pacific Railroad had a 21-stall, two-story roadhouse in Wadsworth.
The Route 50 Bridge in the foreground of this aerial view of Ocean City is the starting point (or end) of the cross-county highway. At the other end; Sacramento, California. ; This railroad bridge that spans the Truckee River at Wadsworth, Nevada (population 991 as of the 2020 census) is one of the last remnants of the once-bustling railroad industry dominated by Central Pacific in the 1800s.
Wadsworth was a thriving company town and supply center with hotels, shops, and saloons that opened the southwest to travelers and tapped into its fishing and trapping areas. So, it was natural that this center on the Lincoln Highway would be selected as the start of a major route east to the capital of Maryland—home of the U.S. Naval Academy and close to Washington, D.C.
U.S. Route 50 reaches its highest elevation of 11,312 feet in Gunnison, Colorado.
Located just 10 miles from U.S. Route 50 in Peebles, Ohio, Serpent Mound Prehistoric Monument is a 1,348-feet-long, three-foot-high prehistoric effigy mound—the largest serpent effigy known in the world.
But today, Wadsworth is a ghost town and U.S. Route 50 is known locally as the “loneliest road in the country” as it winds through miles of Nevada desert and extinct volcanos. The route reaches a high point of 11,312 feet at Gunnison, Colorado. By 1949, the highway route would lengthen to Sacramento westward and Ocean City east.
Every road has a story to tell and along them once-thriving towns have died, such as Wadsworth, while new towns were born, such as Ocean City. U.S. Route 50 was traveled by national heroes and helped birth legends including Kit Carson, The Pony Express, Johnny Appleseed, and George Washington. Along its way, U.S. Route 50 leads travelers and tourists to national parks, canyon lands, serpent mounds in Ohio, Civil War battlefields, historic Annapolis, and Assateague National Seashore, among so many more national treasures. This highway offers an outstanding United States history and landscape story. Though it might not be the best-known or most-romanticized highway in our country, it is the “Backbone of America.” ν
