Route 50

the beating heart of America

A solo paddleboarder is passing east along Spa Creek in his yellow safety vest. I dare say he is likely moving faster than anyone in the environs of Annapolis. We are the western terminus of the majestic Bay Bridge from Kent Island, a piece of land off the Eastern Shore. I cannot imagine what the traffic back up must be for the bridge at 3.30 pm on Friday, 30 June with national projections for this to be the highest travel volume we have seen in years.

I have lived in the Beltway region on and off since 1970 when my father was in language school for another overseas assignment. I also worked for the legislative branch in D.C. before going to graduate school yet my first trip ever to the ‘Beaches’, as we call Bethany Beach and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and Ocean City, Maryland was 4 weeks ago tomorrow. Because we visited friends in Bethany, I did not actually get to start at the beginning of Highway 50 but we traveled most of it on the Eastern shore crossing to and from Annapolis.

50 in that stretch is open, verdant agricultural areas dotted with a few towns giving a historic sense of the remote independence that dominated colonial Maryland before mainland Baltimore and Annapolis came to dominate. Driving along 50 felt open, free, and yet homey as people’s properties showcased the decorations from across the decades, if not centuries.

The Bay Bridge reaches a dozen miles from the Kent Island west to the Cape St. Claire peninsula on the east side of town. The older span is in its eighth decade while I read just this week that the newer span opened a half century ago. I never crossed it before about 2008 as I am averse to traffic backups but it offers a spectacular view of the Chesapeake Bay with Baltimore unseen toward the north. The confluence of the Severn River and the Bay occurs just south of the twin spans.

Prior to the bridge opening, Annapolis and the Eastern Shore relied on ferries to prevent driving all of the way north to the narrow neck of Maryland near Elkton that kisses Delaware. With the multiple peninsulas and water crossings making up this portion of Maryland, it was an exhausting trip before the bridge brought the Easterners closer.

On a good day (defined as Tuesday or Wednesday at this time of the year), the five lanes on two spans of the Bridge can move relatively expeditiously. It definitely sped things up when the state decided to go full Easy Pass back during the pandemic. It is about a ten minute transit when traffic is moving well.

On harder days, the Bay Bridge is a nightmare to avoid if at all possible. Over Memorial Day weekend, advisories indicated the volume increased wait times of more than four hours before even reaching the five lanes (always open two in one direction and three in the other) of the bridge itself. Again, if that is true today as so many people head to the beaches for the first full holiday weekend (a 4 day weekend as the calendar falls), the aforementioned paddleboarder likely was moving faster than the miles of backup. Even if there are no accidents, the volume of people getting to the ocean simply is too much for the infrastructure to handle.

Once one comes off the bridge, Route 50 becomes four lanes across northern Annapolis and into the District of Columbia where it again slows dramatically because of the stop-and-go nature of the nation’s capital. Washington is horrible driving virtually any time of the day as it’s a modern 21st century demand grafted onto a colonial road structure. Too many people (usually too impatient as well) determined to move when they want. Route 50 goes through the District, into Arlington, Viriginia and points west. As one follows this path to the western most suburbs of the nation’s capital, a two hour commitment is probably an optimistic one. I imagine someone traveling from Annapolis to say Middleburg, Virginia can expect more like three hours because of the volume and the traffic signals.

However, as true of the route on the Eastern Shore, the area further west is lush, open, inviting, and welcoming. This is the Virginia ‘horse country’ with large farms illustrating the colonial land distribution and the economic history of slavery in Virginia for its first centuries. But, the land is beautiful and one relaxes beyond the pressure of city driving.

Further from Middleburg is another historic community of Winchester with its close links to the Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains. So many of the smaller, but no less deadly, confrontations of the Civil War happened in the Shenandoah River Valley near Winchester so it is an area replete with possible interest for many who cross.

From the Blue Ridge Route 50 winds into West Virginia, a decidedly less affluent but supremely pretty area. The topography pushes the road through one smaller community after another isolated by mountains and streams and trees. The miles take a drive from Romney through Burlington to New Creek to Mount Storm, then on to Red House, Grafton, Pruntytown and Clarksburg before Route 50’s terminus for West Virginia in Parkersburg, a city of 31,000 along the Ohio River.

From the West Virginia and Ohio state borders, Route 50 wends up into southern Ohio. It passes through Athens, home of Ohio University, and a series of other town largely left behind by the socio-economic transformation of the nation over the past fifty years. Coal mining has passed as a viable future for many and the smaller factories so crucial to small cities like Chillicothe, Bainbridge, and Owensville to name only a few departed for locations abroad in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. The beauty of the rolling terrain does not pay the rent nor put food on the table. By the time Route 50 arrives in Cincinnati, one sees much prosperity in this old German city but one also sees hints of the frustration that turned Ohio for a decidedly Democratic stronghold to one fiercely skeptical that the two coasts care about what happens in the ‘flyover’ territory of the Midwest.

Southern Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois are all farming areas. The road is a long ribbon of asphalt taking you through small communities which have been the U.S. breadbasket for generations. These fiercely independent people see the changes to food demand from globalisation cut substantially into their personal incomes while they also see the challenges of keeping their children close because of growing fears that few opportunities will present themselves.

Even St. Louis, that huge ethnic melting pot that opened the west in the early Nineteenth Century, is a casualty of the changing face of the nation. Its inner city and suburbs have been in the news for racial tensions as much as anything else as the decades of white flight to the ‘County’, as St. Louis’s predominantly wealthy suburbs are known, left the tax base in rough shape. As Route 50 moves west through the wearied city, the neglect characterising so much urban infrastructure is on display. St. Louis, arguably more than Detroit today, is the symbol of the essential steps someone must find to reinvigorate urban America if we are to ever see some metropolitan areas reawaken.

West of St. Louis, 50 Highway as it’s often called, largely parallels the Missouri River and Interstate 70. North of the Big Mo the rich farm land of glaciated soil offers hope for agriculture to continue productivity and prosperity while the areas to the south are considerably poorer soil with many rocks and an overall challenging topography. As true in parts of Ohio, the small communities along this route experienced talent outflow as well as frustration, opioid addictions, and an overall sense of futility which drives anger at Washington, at Jeff City, at politicians, while engendering support for politicians simplistically offering a simpler, less painful time.

Route 50 traverses both big cities in Missouri with Kansas City today even more the entry to the west of the United States than St. Louis two hundred years ago. Kansas City, on a recent trip, was surprisingly vibrant with young people moving back into an urban core that collapsed sixty years back. Whether it can sustain this change is an open question but a cursory view indicated a city more determined to root itself firmly in the tech future than I expected. And they have no intention of surrendering their crown as best barbeque in the world.

50 Highway across Kansas is incredibly wide vistas overlooking farms struggling as they have for a hundred and fifty years. The weather across the Jayhawk state is often harsh—tornadic in spring, parched in the summer (particularly as one drives west), beautiful in autumn, but cold and blustery in the winter. Driving this extremely wide state takes hours, yet the driver rarely recognises she is actually consistently climbing out of the Great Plains towards the foothills of the Rockies. The terrain all appears simply farmland but is actually quite variegated. The towns are small, dotted with what clearly were clearly transportation hubs important for cattle coming to railheads for the Kansas City or Chicago stockyards. These folks on Route 50 illustrate the history of America so clearly with immigrants from the east coast as well as Ukraine, Scandanavia, and other portions of the great influx characterising this country for decades. Eat in Garden City as it’s hard to find much for several hours ahead.

One isn’t far across the Kansas line with Colorado when one sees the spectacle that is Pike’s Peak. Hazy days make the driver wonder if perhaps it’s a mirage but the 14,000 foot peak comes to dominate the driver’s view as one approaches the Front Range. Route 50 does not go into Denver but passes through Pueblo following after the hamlet of Hasty, and the towns of Las Animas and Rocky Ford as it traces the banks of the Arkansas River. At Pueblo it begins to enter the supremely beautiful Rocky Mountains, passing by the SuperMax prison in Florence, the Royal Gorge, and ultimately arrives in Salida before passing stunning Gunnison and Montrose which signifies the western edge of the Rockies. This remote terrain is gorgeous but indicative of the wealth distribution in our nation as many towns are old mining communities barely subsisting today but while others draw skiers and hikers from around the globe.

Route 50 then draws the driver into Utah, along with Nevada, the most remote portions of this three thousand mile journey from coast-to-coast. In Utah, the towns are distant, the beer is hard to find especially as one nears Salt Lake City, and the terrain is almost lunar in its spectacular peculiarity. From Grand Junction, Colorado, one is well-advised not to skip petroleum stations as the signs urge because Green River is about it for miles and miles and miles. The small hamlets of Ohio, Indiana, West Virginia or Missouri are non-existent in Utah and most of Nevada; insufficient water makes this relatively inhospitable. That the Mormons settled here in the mid-Nineteenth Century is indicative of how isolated and determined they were. There are oases and gullywashers do occur but the heat, the relentless vistas of sand, and the quiet is dramatically different from the remainder of the route.

In central Utah, Route 50 dips southerly via Greenwood before jogging back north to Delta, Hinkley, Ely, Eureka, Austin, Salt Wells, and Fallon, Nevada. The topography makes this a lonely, isolated stretch of the country but one that draw in those of us who want quiet. From this city, Fifty continues winding through forgotten communities to Carson City before skirting the southern shore of Lake Tahoe to enter California.

While Nevada is wild, California always envisions itself as the future. That route 50 traverses Placerville is unsurprising, reminding us of the illusion of gold drawing millions to the state along a similar, unpaved route 180 years ago. Route 50 also flows into Sacramento, the capital of a state with so much promise yet current tensions for more than 15% of the nation’s population.

Ultimately, 50 Highway goes directly west from Sacramento to San Francisco where it ends at the western shore as it began at the nation’s eastern shore. San Francisco, that beautiful city on the Bay, is a destination sought by many but so far from the options available to many.

I have never done all of the three thousand miles but I have definitely driven much of it. I recommend Route 50 as a magnifying glass on us, our good and our bad. It is a wonderful, rather than the sole, way to see America and Americans.FIN