When was the washington beltway built

After prolonged negotiations over everything from the route to the name, the final plan for the Capital Beltway was approved on September 28, as part of the Interstate System backed by President Eisenhower. I was constructed in several stages over the next nine years.

Considerable hoopla surrounded the lead-up to the grand opening. Local grocery chain Giant Foods sponsored a promotional cycling tour around a section of the Beltway to highlight the family-friendly sport and to showcase the bicycles sold in their stores.

The initial acclaim was short-lived. This was one of the most controversial decisions and a number of opponents took their grievances to court in trying to block NCPC or at least reroute the planned highway.

Labeling the opposition as anything less than vitriolic would be an understatement. Below is a letter to the editor from the Washington Post in May of that year. Your paper tells us of the determination of the Maryland State Roads Commission to wade into Rock Creek Park with its highway program in spite of protests. So, score another point in favor of arrogant defiance by public officials in the war against law, orderly procedure and the public interest. The Maryland State Roads authorities defied not only the thousands of friends of Rock Creek Park but the congress, the Department of the Interior , the Courts of the District and Maryland, and the law itself.

The residents of Parkwood Drive in Bethesda were vehemently against the Rock Creek plan and 21 neighbors unified behind a petition to halt development in the park.

Robert Brownell were two major opponents and residents of Parkwood. They filed suit to stop development of the highway in April , but they were unsuccessful in stopping development. The alternative to the Rock Creek segment was to route the highway a mile to the north, which would have been better from a traffic engineering perspective, but as stated before, a political impossibility due to the affluent neighborhood it would have to cut through. The path of least resistance was unfortunately through Rock Creek Park.

The battle over this segment of the highway was one of the most contentious debates during the entire project. Nine years after final approval, on August 17th, , the full ring road was complete and dubbed the Capital Beltway segments of the road had been opening since A number of alternate names were proposed and considered, all of which were required to easily fit on reasonably sized road signs.

Imagine if you were stuck in traffic on the Colonial Beltway or the Capital Ring instead. It would still be a soul-sucking experience. This is a photograph from, what appears to be, Central High School Cardozo , some time in the s.

These young ladies are competing in the. Well, not really red paint. This is a shot from sometime in the s and the red-colored dome is covered in primer. We came across this. Many of the original 38 Beltway interchanges were built with the cloverleaf design four ramps and four loops , and some were a modified cloverleaf design that included one or more semi-directional flyover ramps.

Each Interstate interchange I and I in Virginia, I and I and both legs of I in Maryland , was entirely or mostly a semi-directional interchange.

A few of the Beltway interchanges were built with the diamond four ramps design. Final Design of Capital Beltway Highway agencies and their hired engineering consultants in both Maryland and Virginia, charted a completely new alignment for the beltway, because so few inter-suburban roads existed in the mids that could have been upgraded to become part of the route.

No Potomac River bridges existed in the Washington metropolitan area between Virginia and Maryland, so two completely new Potomac River bridges were required for building a new beltway which would completely encircle and bypass Washington and Arlington. Micheal Baker Corporation was the main engineering firm that performed the final design on segments of the Capital Beltway in Maryland.

Michael Baker by then was a nationally known engineering firm that had designed many highway and bridge projects. The Pennsylvania-based firm opened a branch office on the third floor of the new College Park Business Center, in April By , according to an in-house newsletter, Baker had completed designs on many Maryland and D.

The Maryland segment of the beltway was planned to follow open corridors as much as possible, to avoid heavily developed areas where possible, and in Prince Georges County it was possible to avoid heavily developed areas, but in Montgomery County that was not possible in every area as there were some segments with heavy impacts to developed areas with many homes and businesses acquired for the highway right-of-way; and a 2-mile beltway segment was built through Rock Creek Park over the objections of state and federal public park agencies, something that probably would not have been possible after Congressional enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act NEPA , as one of the many things that NEPA did was to make it virtually impossible to build a highway through major public parkland.

The alternative to the Rock Creek Park alignment would have been to locate the highway on a straighter alignment about a mile to the north, which would have been advantageous from a traffic engineering standpoint, but which was effectively politically impossible as it would have passed through heavily developed and very affluent residential sections of Bethesda. After NEPA, it is quite possible that it would not have been possible to find a feasible location build that segment of the Beltway if it had not already been built, and that would have left a missing link in the Beltway between MD Wisconsin Avenue and MD Georgia Avenue.

The Baker Engineer 3. To shift from this alignment would either involve considerable property damage to heavily developed areas or require the location of this route much further from Arlington and the Washington area. The U. Naming of Capital Beltway. When the final link of the Beltway was completed and opened to traffic on Monday, August 17, , it had already been officially named the Capital Beltway, and its route designation throughout was Interstate I In the years after the proposed beltway route had officially made its first appearance on the planning maps of the National Capital Park and Planning Commission NCPPC , and the planning maps of the Maryland - National Capital Planning Commission M-NCPC , it had been referred to by a variety of names, including the Washington Circumferential Highway, Circumferential Highway, the circumferential, the belt road, the belt parkway, the inter-county freeway, the inter-county belt highway, the inter-county belt freeway, and the inter-county belt parkway.

During the construction period of the Beltway, Maryland and Virginia officials separately made efforts to find a name which would be easy to speak and which would fit easily on roadway signs. Fairfax County, Virginia officials approved the name "Capital Ring", but state officials disagreed, as they wanted a name to honor George Washington or George Mason. Virginia officials then decided to name its Beltway section "Capitol Beltway", in agreement with Maryland officials.

In the next few months, various officials and citizens pointed out that the word "capitol" refers to the building that houses the legislature which is true for a state capital or for the U. Each crossing connects Virginia and Maryland, and a small mid-span section of the southern bridge crosses an over-water corner of the District of Columbia. The closest local road access interchanges on each crossing are, for the northern crossing, in Montgomery County, Maryland, and in Fairfax County, Virginia; and for the southern crossing, in the City of Alexandria, Virginia, and in Prince Georges County, Maryland.

The construction of the original 5, foot long southern Potomac River crossing at Alexandria was authorized by the U. On August 30, , President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Public Law , "An Act to authorize and direct the construction of bridges over the Potomac River, and for other purposes. However, the cost of the approaches and improvements to collateral streets and highways was to be borne by the States of Maryland and Virginia: The Secretary shall not begin construction of the bridge.

Construction began on the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge in The six-lane Potomac River bridge and 3. The bridge is most commonly publicly referred to by the shorthand name versions of Woodrow Wilson Bridge or Wilson Bridge. Woodrow Wilson, widow of the President, was to have unveiled a plaque in the memory of her husband, but she is gravely ill. Eisenhower approved House Bill on August 30, In , BPR began construction, which involved 13 contracts.

Only short sections of the beltway on either side of the bridge are open, but traffic on the bridge quickly reaches 18, vehicles per day.

The first new 6-lane Woodrow Wilson Bridge was opened to traffic in two stages in June and July of , and it will be configured for 3 lanes each way until the 6-lane bridge for the Inner Loop of the Beltway opens to traffic in mid When the new twin-span Woodrow Wilson Bridge is complete in mid, it will then be jointly owned and administered by the states of Virginia and Maryland. An agreement was worked out in August by the Federal Highway Administration FHWA , Virginia and Maryland, to turn over the ownership of the new bridge, when it is completed, to joint ownership by Virginia and Maryland.

These two photos were taken on August 14, , by the Virginia Department of Transportation, and posted here with their permission.

Click photo for large image. The six-lane Potomac River bridge, and 7. While an impressive bridge in its own right, it is much shorter than the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge crosses a major shipping channel, while the northern crossing does not pass over a navigation channel, as the Potomac River is a shallow rocky river at that point.

This northern crossing Beltway bridge did not have an official name until , but it was commonly referred to as the Cabin John Bridge, a name that was "borrowed" from a nearby foot-span stone arch aqueduct bridge that was opened in over Cabin John Creek in Montgomery County, Maryland, and this local bridge is still an aqueduct as well as carrying 2 lanes of MacArthur Boulevard.

The 50th anniversary of the nation's largest military veterans organization was the occasion for the expression of Maryland legislative sentiment to name the Beltway bridge the American Legion Memorial Bridge, effective May 30, , on Memorial Day.

The public was slow in utilizing the new name, and for many years afterward many local people still called it the "Cabin John Bridge", although by the s, it was most commonly publicly referred to as the American Legion Memorial Bridge, or by the shorthand name versions of Legion Bridge or American Legion Bridge.

Construction of Capital Beltway in Maryland The first Beltway construction work began in February for a Beltway bridge over Cedar Lane, just east of Wisconsin Avenue, inside of Rock Creek Park; and this contract was for the bridge alone, with the approach roadways to be built later.

The first construction contract bids for the Beltway roadway were opened in April , for the 1. The Woodrow Wilson Bridge and the 3. Department of the Interior, and which is a acre scientific retreat; and the Beltway alignment was moved yards further west, still passing over a part of the island, but expected to have lower environmental impacts.

The 3. A few weeks later, the 1. The 8. There were also difficulties in constructing the Beltway segment through marshlands along the stream valley of Cameron Run along the southern border of the City of Alexandria in the area where the Beltway has interchanges with US-1 Jefferson Davis Highway and VA Telegraph Road.

The first 6. The 0. On December 31, , 4. The last 6. It was another cold, wet and windy day, a seeming hallmark of Capital Beltway openings, and over attendees listened to speeches by Virginia Department of Highways Commissioner agency head Douglas B. Fugate, U. This segment opening also marked the completion of the first Interstate highway statewide in Virginia.

Burroughs, Virginia Highway Bulletin , January Fugate, Annandale Free Press , April 2, Opening Dates of Capital Beltway Segments. The following table summarizes the segment openings detailed in the previous two article sections.

The first segment opened in , as noted previously, and was closed, rebuilt to a higher design, and reopened in the final segment opening, so the table below counts that 1. Capital Beltway - Segment Openings.

For the most part, the topography and soil geology of suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia was conducive to standard highway engineering and construction techniques. The Beltway is located in two geologic provinces, neither of which was particularly challenging to road builders. Much of the eastern half of the Beltway is in the Coastal Plain, which is a gently undulating plain that extends along the Eastern Seaboard from Mexico to New Jersey, and it is characterized by tidal estuaries such as rivers and bays including the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay, and the terrain gradually rises in elevation from the Atlantic Ocean westward to hills up to about feet above sea level in elevation near its western boundary.

The geologic province immediately to the west is the Piedmont, which is a band of rolling hills with rocks just below the surface, running from Alabama to New York, and its elevations range from sea level to about 1, feet above sea level. The Piedmont is bounded to the west by the Triassic Lowland province. The boundary between the Coastal Plain and the Piedmont generally bisects the District of Columbia and the Capital Beltway from southwest to northeast.

The topography and geology of both provinces posed relatively few challenges to the designers of the Beltway. There were difficulties in constructing the six lane three lanes each way Beltway segment through marshlands along the stream valley of Cameron Run near the southern border of the City of Alexandria in the area where the Beltway has interchanges with US-1 Jefferson Davis Highway and VA Telegraph Road.

Like many stream valleys, the soil has a high amount of organic material and has a high water content, so the soil is compressible and in its natural state is inadequate for supporting a highway. The natural channel of Cameron Run meandered north and south of the Beltway right-of-way between VA and US-1, and on the mid-section of that segment, the channel of Cameron Run was relocated to a straight channel alongside the south edge of the Beltway.

On large parts of that Beltway segment, borrow excavation select soil backfill was deposited to provide the base of the Beltway roadways. The above design, like building the 2-mile Beltway segment through Rock Creek Park in Montgomery County, Maryland, most likely would have been impossible to build after enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act NEPA , with its stringent federal environmental standards.

Unfortunately, these kind of highway designs were commonplace all over the U. After NEPA, many such highway segments were able to be built without filling in marshlands and streams, but only by placing the highway on bridge structures that passed over those natural resources, even though financially that made the highway segment much more expensive to build than if it was built on earthen fill.

Such a post-NEPA design would have placed most of the 1. Building the Beltway segment between VA and US-1 as it was historically constructed, posed considerable engineering challenges. The engineering firm who designed a segment of the New Jersey Turnpike through the Meadowlands near Newark in the late s, faced a similar soil situation, and they were hired by HNTB to design this segment of the Beltway.

VDH engineer F. Borroughs wrote about this design procedure in quote in blue text : Now, the section of Route 1 south of Alexandria is an extremely marshy and wet area. We had several very uneasy moments as [survey stake-out] points seemed to move around. From this interchange westward along , the roadway is completely in marshland. To provide stability and underbearing for the beltway, a construction process new to the Department was undertaken.

The shoulders on the Maryland section of the Beltway have always utilized asphalt concrete throughout. The various connecting roads and highways that interchange with the Beltway, had the interchanges and connecting roads built along with the Beltway.

The ramps typically were constructed with the same pavement material as that section of the mainline Beltway. The connecting roads and highways were in most cases constructed with asphalt pavement.

The current Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project includes the widening of 7. All bridges on the project will be replaced with new bridges, and the riding surface of the roadway decks will be reinforced Portland cement concrete.

Completion of Capital Beltway. Route Numbering of Capital Beltway. Following the Federal Aid Highway Act of by Congress that authorized the construction of the national 41,mile Interstate Highway System, including the proposed mile-long Washington circumferential highway, the entire beltway was granted the Interstate Route I designation by federal and state highway officials.

Three-digit Interstate routes have a leading digit with the last two digits being the mainline route that it supplements, so I-x95 routes would have routes such as the ones in Virginia, I, I, I and I An odd-number leading digit signifies a spur route off a mainline route examples are I and I An even-number leading digit signifies a loop around a city examples are I and I , or a branch route connecting two Interstate highways an example is I in Maryland.

Three-digit Interstate route numbers can duplicate, but not in the same state. The completed Beltway was designated I throughout from to The I designation was moved to the eastern half of the I Beltway in , and I was removed from the eastern half of the Beltway, and I replaced the I designation on Shirley Highway from I to the 14th Street Bridge, on the 14th Street Bridge itself, on the Southwest Freeway in D. Today's I is the former segment of I inside of the Beltway.

Many regional motorists never fully adjusted to having a full-circle beltway with halves with two different numbers I and I In , the I designation was applied back to the eastern portion of the beltway, so the whole Beltway is again I, and the eastern portion is I also it carries both I and I The Beltway has the clockwise direction as in looking at a map of the Beltway signed as the Inner Loop, and the counter-clockwise direction is signed as the Outer Loop. Exit Numbering on Capital Beltway.

The exit interchange numbering on the Beltway began with a sequential system in when the Beltway was fully complete, and it was a somewhat hybrid system from to , and in was finalized to a fully milepost-based system that should last permanently. The official decision in to cancel the remaining unbuilt segments of I in the District of Columbia and Maryland, and the concurrent decision to move the I designation to the eastern portion of the Beltway, was the cause of the need to renumber the exits on the Beltway.

The period of the s and later was also a time when many states changed their Interstate highway exit numbering from sequential numbering to milepost-based numbering. Sequential exit numbering means that the exit numbers increase consecutively 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. Milepost-based exit numbering means that each exit number is the same as the number of the nearest milepost, and while the numbers are not consecutive for example if four exits in sequence were at mileposts 7, 9, 11 and 15, then those would be the respective exit numbers , milepost-based exit numbering has widespread public support because it makes it easy to compute how many miles one needs to travel from where they are currently, to reach their destination exit, although the fact that exit numbers usually start over at zero at the beginning of each state border, removes that advantage for an inter-state trip.

Maryland began instituting milepost-based exit numbering on its Interstate highways about , and specifically on the Capital Beltway in The federal standard for exit numbering on Interstate highways, is for the numbering to advance from south to north on north-south highways, and from west to east on east-west highways.

Since the eastern portion of the Beltway was I alone at that point, Maryland posted milepost zero at the state border at Alexandria, and advanced the milepost numbers along I all the way to Delaware. Each Beltway interchange in Maryland was given milepost-based exit numbering, so from and onward there were exits 2 through 41 in Maryland, running counterclockwise as viewed on a map from above.

In , Virginia renumbered its exits 1 through 4 to 58 through 61 to be consistent with the rest of its sequential exit numbering on its I, and while this eliminated the duplication of Beltway exit numbers 2, 3 and 4 in both states, it created three unrelated exit numbering schemes on the Beltway. In , the two states decided to apply I back to the I eastern portion of the Beltway. In , the two states agreed to post along the Beltway signs with a Capital Beltway logo in red, white and blue, with an image of the U.

Virginia did not convert its statewide Interstate highway exit numbering system from sequential numbering to milepost-based numbering until beginning in , and the Beltway exits were renumbered in The current Beltway exit numbering system should be permanent, as it follows the milepost-based Interstate highway exit numbering system in both states, which should be permanent. There is no foreseeable reason why the Beltway exit numbering system should see any more changes the future completion of the canceled original downtown route of I through the District of Columbia is not impossible but is highly unlikely.

This underscores the inadequate Beltway coordination between the two states, at times, that has impacted the management of what is one metropolitan circumferential freeway. The Capital Beltway when completed in had 37 interchanges, and in that number increased to 38 when I in Maryland was completed to the Beltway. These two pairs of Beltway junctions were each defined as a single interchange in the original exit numbering system -- IS and MD, and MD and Cabin John Parkway; and in Maryland's exit renumbering, each in those pairs has a separate exit number; and it is a matter of definition as to whether each of those pairs should be considered to be one interchange or two interchanges.

The Beltway as exit-numbered in has 44 interchanges. Speed Limits on Capital Beltway. Since the National Maximum Speed Limit act was enacted, which mandated a maximum speed limit in the U. In the NMSL was modified to allow 65 mph on rural Interstate highways, and the Beltway was ruled to be in a metropolitan area and not rural and still subject to a federal maximum of 55 mph.

In the U. Congress abolished the national maximum speed limit, and returned the setting of speed limits back to state control as was the case before , thus making it possible to have higher speed limits on the Beltway.

The I Capital Beltway opened in to much optimism and enthusiasm. By and , traffic volumes of cars and trucks had grown to the point where the highway was always well-used, with traffic volumes during peak hours approaching the capacity of the highway on various sections, and the maximum segment volume then was about 80, vehicles per day.