Baltimore-Washington Parkway

The Baltimore-Washington Parkway is a picturesque road that links two major metropolitan areas. The road begins at Prince George's County at the Washington, D.C. border, and continues for 32.5 miles northeast as a parkway maintained by the National Park Service to MD 175 near Fort Meade. Plans for a parkway date back to Pierre Charles L'Enfant's original layout for Washington, D.C. in the 18th century but did not fully develop until the 1920s. Major reasons surrounding the need for a parkway included high accident rates on adjacent US 1 and defense purposes before World War II. In the mid-1940s, plans for the design of the parkway were finalized and construction began in 1947 for the state-maintained portion and in 1950 for the NPS-maintained segment. The entire parkway was open to traffic in 1954. Today, the B-W Parkway is a scenic route popular with commuters and tourists alike.