If the weather holds and brings a glorious day, this Sunday about 60,000 men, women and children will make their way on foot across the eastbound span of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
It’s an annual event begun in 1975, when a Baltimore County Boy Scout troop leader asked if one of the twin 4.3-mile spans could be closed to vehicular traffic for a few hours to let people walk across it. The Maryland Transportation Authority approved the idea, and the event was on.
It almost didn’t happen this year. The terrorist attacks of September 11 put a stop to the walk in 2002 and 2003, because police and emergency personnel were stretched thin to protect airports and other public places.
But with relative quiet on the terror front and two years of unused budget in hand, the MTA decided to organize a walk this year.
Every year since 1975 — except for 1980, when severe wind and rain forced cancellation of the walk, and 1977, when another wet-out pushed the event to a rescheduled fall date — the crowds have grown exponentially. Today, walkers include families pushing strollers, church groups, seniors, wheelchair athletes, Little Leaguers and Scout troops, along with a rich mix of young singles and couples of all descriptions who somehow heard about the wacky idea that they could walk across the Bay.
This Sunday beginning at 8:30 a.m., that army of bridge walkers will be shuttled across the eastbound span from parking lots at its west end and deposited at the eastern end to do their thing — that is, walk from east to west back to the buses on what everyone hopes will be a cool but brilliantly sunny day.
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The most recent walk — on April 29, 2001 — was blessed with precisely that kind of weather. Sunburn blistered the hatless, but salty breezes from the Bay made the climb to the roadway’s high point, 186 feet above the Bay, nearly effortless and perspiration-free.
What that day’s walkers found, and this weekend’s will find, is a kind of art: the mechanical wonder of a suspension bridge put up in 1952; the surprising quiet of a truckless, carless, vanless roadway; the unexpected harshness of the sea gulls’ cries; the sheer serenity of the bayscape beneath one’s feet and the pleasure of taking one’s own sweet time to see it.
From the heights, a good eye can make out to the north the downtown skyscrapers and urban haze of Baltimore’s skyline. To the east a bit, the smudge of steel mills rises over Sparrows Point. Annapolis sits clean and neat to the south on an elbow of green bending into the water, a city peeking from behind a curtain of trees.
Oceangoing ships plying the Baltimore trade sit at anchor awaiting docking time or swiftly make for the bridges and glide under them. Looking at first like toys, they grow into enormous, nearly cinematic creations, swift and silent as they slide below the bridges to emerge leaving a curl of propeller wash. All around, the little white sails of pleasure boats bend to the wind and trail lacy foam webs through the blue.
Peering down through the joints of the bridge to look at the boats can be unsettling: The bridge bends to the weight of traffic with joints separated by up to 6 inches of void. Walk organizers may mask the joints to keep walkers calm; in 2001 they covered them with long sheets of plywood bound with duct tape. But little boys may still drive parents crazy by trying to push debris through random open joint slots to the water far below.
The average bridge walk is about two hours, according to the MTA, time enough to connect not only the two shores, but somehow to become part of the beauty of the moment on the Bay, a moment that can be held in memory for years.
That could be the biggest kick of the Bay Bridge walk — a chance at insight into one’s own notion of what a bridge is and what it does both symbolically and in memory.
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So what is a bridge? Is it something that, like the roadway beneath the shuttle buses on the Bay Bridge, takes us from where we were to where we are? And shall we stay there or walk back?
In some cases, a bridge is a path to history — or to nowhere, whichever comes first.
Take the ruined Queen Anne Bridge Road span near the ghost town of Hardesty. Hard to find, it’s a simple 1931 single-lane truss bridge of perhaps 39 paces crossing the Patuxent River between Prince George’s and Anne Arundel counties just off Central Avenue near Davidsonville, Md.
A dump truck hauling gravel caused it to collapse in 1954, according to Greg Lewis, facilities manager for 6,000 acres of protected riverfront in Prince George’s County. His office at the National Capital Park and Planning Commission oversees a tiny parking area and gate leading down to the bridge at the water’s edge.
“Men and boys for years have come to catch fish right off the bridge,” Mr. Lewis says. Perch and herring are running right now, he says, and though fishing and visiting the bridge are restricted to daylight hours and the gate is locked after sundown, the anglers fish far into the night during the shad, perch and herring runs.
They drink beer, too, and that is as illegal as the burning automobile tires they sometimes fire up on the bridge late at night for warmth and light during the cool spring fishing season.
Today there’s a gas station and general store nearby, where one can buy fishing licenses and nets to haul in the perch and herring.
The riverfront is free of man-made structures and overgrown with trees. Look closely, though, and the roll of the earth suggests where houses once may have stood, where barrels once may have been rolled down to ships.
The bridge once led to Hardesty, a Colonial Maryland tobacco town when the area was a frontier post sending tobacco and animal pelts to England. Queen Anne was a Stuart who ruled from London from 1702 until her death in 1714, and Prince George’s County is named after her husband, George, Prince of Denmark.
The Hardestys immigrated from York in northern England in 1700, becoming prosperous merchants and magistrates who owned land and slaves along this riverbank.
Family members fought in the Union and Confederate armies and thereafter dispersed westward as silt filled the Patuxent from upstream development and ruinous farming practices.
“The town of Queen Anne was a few hundred yards upstream,” says Mr. Lewis. “It disappeared, too, just falling apart after travel on the river stopped.”
That’s the secret of the bridge, Mr. Lewis says. “It’s a little bridge to nowhere now.”
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An entirely different experience follows a walker across the bridge to Roosevelt Island, in the Potomac between the Georgetown waterfront in the District and the high-rise offices and hotels across Key Bridge in Rosslyn.
The little tree-covered island had many names over the years, starting in 1681 and the time of Lord Baltimore, when the place was called “My Lord’s Island.” He granted it to Capt. Randolf Brant, a scout and “Indian fighter” who renamed it “Barbados.” After George Mason bought it in 1717, it became known as Mason’s Island until it was dedicated in 1931 to honor President Theodore Roosevelt (who never had visited the place).
Functional and modern, the long narrow platform and thin walkway of the bridge run over six thick barrels of concrete from the Virginia side of the river to a few acres of the island.
Strollers on the bridge can see a glorious riverfront display of modern Georgetown, which frames the little island. Key Bridge soars over its western edge, while the Kennedy Center frames its eastern side. On the way back, the bridge view is of Rosslyn’s skyscrapers and dazzling office buildings — a jarring “yin and yang” that encapsulates the city’s past and up-tempo present.
What makes it special, beyond its immediate visual kick, is the memory of photos once seen of Union troops stationed on the island during the Civil War. They protected the rope-drawn ferry running between the still-recognizable Georgetown waterfront and the Virginia shore opposite.
The view is still powerful today, especially at night, when the park is closed and young people sneak over on canoes rented at nearby boathouses in Georgetown. From the Kennedy Center Terrace at night one sometimes sees them fumbling with flashlights trying to find their canoes in the dark.
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A few miles upriver to the west is the longest stone arch bridge in North America, one that has been called a masterpiece of civil engineering. Built between 1857 and 1863, the 220-foot-long Union Arch — known fondly as the “Cabin John Bridge” and not to be confused with the American Legion Bridge across the Potomac River — still carries nearly 200,000 gallons of Potomac water daily to treatment plants serving the District. It supports a single-lane roadway and a pedestrian walkway spanning a gorge some 57 feet above the Cabin John Creek and Parkway below.
Congress ordered this aqueduct built after the War of 1812, when the British army entered Washington and burned down most of the White House and several other federal buildings. With only a few wells and springs, there were no reliable systems in the nation’s capital providing clean drinking water that could be used in emergencies to control fire.
West Pointer Montgomery Meigs of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers planned the bridge and oversaw its construction at about the same time he was supervising construction of the dome of the U.S. Capitol. Later, as commandant of the Washington garrison, he chose Robert E. Lee’s mansion in Arlington as the site of the Union’s national cemetery — and had a Union soldier buried in Lee’s mother’s garden — a move many historians believe grew from his fury at Lee’s decision to fight for the Confederacy.
The Cabin John Bridge carries a plaque on its side listing Franklin Pierce as president of the United States and Jefferson Davis as secretary of war.
Leading up to it are the ruins of wooden trestle bridges left over from the days when the D.C. Transit System’s electric trolley cars ran from Georgetown to Glen Echo and ended at the Union Arch. Generations of families rode those rails to escape Washington’s stifling summers, spending a day at Glen Echo or longer stays at resort cabins and fancy hotels at the end of the line.
Today that’s all gone, with the area of the Union Arch surrounded by nature, walking and bicycling trails. The Cabin John Citizens Association occasionally organizes festivals to celebrate the bridge, says past president Andrew Rice. In 2001, when restoration was completed on new guardrails, the group held a parade and picnic, with speeches, music, and games for the children, he says.
“It’s all a symbol,” Mr. Rice says, “not worshipped, but admired as a beautiful creation that ties us to the long history of our place.”
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While the urgency of a safer White House passed in the years after the Civil War, proposals for a park running through the gorge created by Rock Creek took root. By 1890, the park was established, and with it came the creation of the National Zoo, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, and roadways crisscrossing Rock Creek and its tributaries.
The most imposing of these are the William Howard Taft Bridge, which carries Connecticut Avenue over the park, and the Calvert Street Bridge, now known as the Duke Ellington Bridge. They were designed respectively by George S. Morison, the civil engineer famed for persuading President Theodore Roosevelt that the place to build a Central American link between the Atlantic and Pacific was the Panamanian isthmus; and society architect Paul Philippe Cret, who designed the Pan American Union building downtown, the All Souls Unitarian Church at 16th and Harvard streets NW and the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Cret’s Calvert Street Bridge is a neoclassical gem finished in 1931. Morison’s masterpiece, opened in 1907, is a seven-arched span of perfect Roman order. The huge arches rise from the valley floor on cut stone as one might see at the Roman aqueducts of Nimes in southeastern France or at Segovia just west of Madrid.
Walking across either span carries the eye to the top of mature trees hugging the gorge walls, while the silver of moving water twinkles in the creek below.
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Other favorite bridges there include a sagging wooden bridge that leans over a side creek running beside Blagden Road to the east of Rock Creek Parkway. On Beach Drive north of Blagden Road, half hidden under branches and looking more like a pier than a span, is the stump of a ruined bridge dating back to the park’s creation. Like the Irish poet James Joyce’s remark, in “Ulysses,” that a pier is a disappointed bridge, this leads outward but does not connect. Yet it draws teenagers sometimes to tiptoe across the narrow bands of steel that jut out about 9 feet over Rock Creek. To fall there almost certainly would require a hospital visit.
Farther up Beach Drive north of 16th Street is the antithesis of a bridge, a kind of mockery. A gentle bed of a 30-foot cement weir runs under the creek and leads to a trail that horseback riders sometime take. The water froths and sparkles, delighting the barefoot in summer.
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The best-kept bridge in the Washington area is the smallest and belongs to John “Jack” Berwyn Carson of Takoma Park. For 20 years, he has maintained a handmade cedar bridge, 10 feet long and 4 feet wide, that rises just 8 inches above a snail-slick of water running through a huge bed of English ivy in the back yard of his home.
The Washington native, a Howard University science graduate, retired from the federal government to the house his grandmother bought in 1949. In the back yard, he created a nature preserve certified by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, a haven of water, plants and food varieties for birds and turtles, possum and “other critters,” he says.
“I like standing on the bridge and looking out over the yard,” he says. “Bridges are connectors, here connecting my suburban yard and house to the surrounding birds and wildlife noises, the trees and wetlands area back there.”
“My bridge is a vehicle for escaping,” says Mr. Carson, whose middle name honors the family’s ownership of the pre-Revolutionary Carrington Manor house in Berwyn Heights.
“And I don’t have one friend who has one,” he says with a laugh.
Once-a-year chance to cross Bay on foot
WHAT: The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Walk
WHERE: Begins at the eastern end of the eastbound span
WHEN: 9 a.m. May 2. Shuttle buses begin boarding walkers from three parking lots at 8:30 a.m. and continue boarding until 1 p.m. Return buses operate until the span is clear of pedestrians. The eastbound bridge will be closed to vehicles 5 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. The westbound bridge will remain open to two-way traffic all day.
COST: $1 for participants 6 and older.
PARKING AND BOARDING AREAS: Lots usually fill by 10 a.m. No one will be permitted to walk to the bridge from the Eastern Shore. Participants must park, check in, go through security (which includes inspection of all handbags and carried items) and board Maryland Transportation Authority buses at one of three areas:
• On the Eastern Shore, just off U.S. Route 50 at the intersection of Maryland 8 and Maryland 18 in Stevensville on Kent Island, approximately 1.7 miles east of the Bay Bridge. Best for walkers from the Eastern Shore and Delaware.
PROHIBITIONS: No “walk-ups” to the bridge. No jogging, running, pets, bikes, portable radios, roller skates, in-line skates or skateboards. Strollers or small wagons to carry children are permitted. Participants of all ages in wheelchairs are welcome; all shuttle buses can accommodate wheelchairs.
CANCELLATION: The walk will be canceled if rain or high winds threaten safety or in the event of an increased terror alert. A decision to cancel will be made at 6 a.m. May 2. If canceled, the walk will not be rescheduled for this year. Phone 877/229-7726 after 6:30 a.m. the day of the walk to hear a recording on whether the walk will proceed.
RESOURCES: Drinking water and portable restrooms will be at both ends of the bridge and on the bridge itself. Police will be stationed at intervals on the bridge, along with emergency medical personnel and ambulances. Parents separated from children will have access to police on the bridge. Lost property may be claimed at the truck weighing station just beyond the walk’s finishing line.
FURTHER INFORMATION: 877/229-7726 or www.mdtransportationauthority.com.
BRIDGE RUN: The governor’s Bay Bridge Run on May 2 is a 10K event sponsored by the Annapolis Striders and is limited to the first 3,000 registered runners. It begins at 7 a.m. at Sandy Point State Park. See www.annapolisstriders.org.
Trek to Norfolk
Want a second chance at a Bay walk? There is a less-known but powerful alternative to the annual Chesapeake Bay Bridge Walk. The seventh annual Family Fun Day on the Bay sponsored by the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel Authority is scheduled for Oct. 2.
Some 7,000 participants last year walked, biked and wheelchaired all or part of the 17.6-mile bridge and tunnel structure connecting the Delmarva Peninsula with the Hampton Roads area of Southeastern Virginia. The Bridge-Tunnel does not rise as high as the Bay Bridge at Kent Island, but its long reach into the lower Chesapeake, where it mingles with the Atlantic Ocean, presents a huge water- and skyscape interrupted only by passing supertankers and military vessels headed for ports from Baltimore to Portsmouth.
Participants are asked to bring canned goods and other donations to support area food banks in Southern Virginia. For more information, see www.cbbt.com.
Finding way to bridges
Everyone has a favorite bridge. Here’s how to reach some of those mentioned in the story.
• Queen Anne’s Bridge: At the end of Queen Anne Bridge Road, off Route 214, Central Avenue, in Prince George’s County, near the ghost town of Hardesty. This collapsed bridge over the Patuxent River is frequented by fishermen. The shoreline is protected by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. A parking lot and gated access to the bridge are overseen by the National Capital Area Park and Planning Commission. The closest municipality is Davidsonville, in Anne Arundel County, where fishing gear and licenses may be purchased at the general store at the only stoplight in town. For background, see www.dnr.state.md.us/public lands/aapaxqa.html. For more information, call 301/627-6074.
• A public reservation overseen by the National Park Service. Created in 1890, it runs from the Georgetown waterfront across from Roosevelt Island northward along the picturesque gorge created by Rock Creek up into Montgomery County. Numerous bridges cross the creek. For directions and a map, see www.cr.nps .gov/nr/travel/wash and click on “list of sites” and “maps” for Georgetown and upper Northwest.
• Roosevelt Island Bridge: Accessible only via a sudden sharp right turn in the northbound lane of the George Washington Parkway as it passes between Roosevelt Bridge and the Key Bridge underpass in Virginia, opposite Georgetown. Open 7 a.m. to dusk. Admission free. The property is managed by the Department of Interior and is largely wild and unsuited for biking. Most areas of the heavily wooded island are difficult for baby carriages or wheelchairs.
• Union Arch at Cabin John: An aqueduct and one-lane bridge over Cabin John Parkway and Cabin John Creek on MacArthur Boulevard in the town of Cabin John, just west of Glen Echo. At the western end of the bridge, find a small roadside parking area, with a large three-panel marker providing a history and vintage photos of the bridge and the area. See the Cabin John Citizens Association Web site at www.cabin john.org.
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