U.S. Route 1, a Road of Many Names

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Maryland’s Historic & Iconic Roads: U.S. Route 1 is more than 300 years old and has accumulated a history of monikers and stories to match

It is the oldest road in the nation. We know it as U.S. Route 1. But highways didn’t get numbered designations until the action of the federal government in 1926. Before that, this route was known by a number of names: the “Kings Highway,” the “Boston Post Road,” and the “Atlantic Highway.”

Its beginning goes back to 1650 but was formally planned in 1673 by order of King Charles II of England to connect Boston, Massachusetts, with Charleston, South Carolina, 1,300 miles away. The horse and foot route followed a collection of dirt roads through forests, farmland, and Native American trails. And then, governed by the 1704 Act of Province of Maryland that required counties to build 20-foot-wide roads, it grew wide enough to allow horse drawn carriages to pass comfortably. 

Eventually, turnpike companies took over toll operations and maintenance, but the oldest road in the nation, after 300 years, still follows much of its original 1,300 miles. Today, of course, it is longer than 1,300 miles, extending from Fort Kent, Maine, to Key West, Florida. It is 2,370 miles long and roughly parallels Interstate 95.

Over the years, the route was known as the Boston Post Road as it was the mail delivery route between Boston and New York City when we were still colonial America. It was the Baltimore Pike between Baltimore and Philadelphia and the Dixie Highway on a western route along the Fall Line in Georgia. U.S. Route 1 was among the first auto trails established in 1911 and named the Atlantic Highway in 1915.

It was the Atlantic Highway that first was assigned the U.S. Route 1 designation for being the eastern-most and longest north/south route when the U.S. road system was finally laid out in the 1920s. As the first interstate highway, it is one of history. Of its full 2,370 miles, 81 are in Maryland, from Rising Sun on the Susquehanna River to the Nation’s Capital. 

In Maryland, U.S. Route 1 follows the turnpike first chartered in 1796. The Baltimore-Washington Turnpike of 1812 followed an old dirt road from West Baltimore to D.C. at Bladensburg, with ferries crossing the winding Patapsco River at Elkridge Landing before a disastrous flood wiped it out. By 1915, however, Maryland’s designated portion of the original road was completely paved and heavily used by World War I traffic. Then, as automobile traffic increased, Maryland’s U.S. Route 1 became a roadway with thousands of billboards lining it into D.C.

Today, a trip down U.S. Route 1 begins in Fort Kent, Maine, a French speaking border town of 4,000 residents. It is the home of the Olympic Biathlon training center that involves cross country skiing and rifle shooting. The winter sport had its origins in Norway as training for the military. The first world championship was in Austria in 1958. By 1960, it was an Olympic sport. Fort Kent’s motto is “the little town that could” when it was incorporated on February 23rd, 1869, after a non-war skirmish over the boundary with Canada. The Fort Kent Blockhouse built in reaction to the Aroostook War (nicknamed the pork and beans war) is a historic site, one of the few, if only, forts never engaged in combat. In 1926, Fort Kent boasted its designation as the start of U.S. Route 1 with a historic sign noting 2,370 miles to Key West, Florida.

Along its way, U.S. Route 1 follows 2,165 miles of coast, crossing 14 States. It has a variety of route numbers today, as far the U.S. numbering system goes. Though it had many names throughout its history, the Kings Highway, ordered by an English King in the 1660s to connect two important colonial towns 1,300 miles apart and a host of others in between, was an innovative action by a real King (who would lose his head in 1685) 2,500 miles away.