Key Highway

Infobox road
state=MD
type=MD Truck
route=2
alternate_name=Key Highway

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length_mi=2.3
length_ref= [Google Maps, [http://maps.google.com/maps?um=1&tab=wl&hl=en&q=w%20mccomas%20st%20%26%20s%20hanover%20st%2C%20baltimore%2C%20md%20via%20key%20highway%20to%20key%20highway%20%26%20light%20st%2C%20baltimore%2C%20md driving directions along MD 2 Truck] ]
length_round=1
established=
direction_a=South
starting_terminus=
junction=
direction_b=North
ending_terminus=
spur_type=MD
spur_of=2

Key Highway is a road south of downtown Baltimore, Maryland, United States. It runs from McComas Street at exit 55 of Interstate 95, just west of the Fort McHenry Tunnel, north and west to Light Street (MD 2), mostly paralleling the Northwest Harbor and serving the piers on the harbor. Along with McComas Street west to Hanover Street (MD 2), the road forms a truck bypass of the Federal Hill neighborhood known as Maryland Route 2 Truck. [Maryland State Highway Administration, PDFlink| [http://www.sha.state.md.us/SHAServices/mapsBrochures/maps/OPPE/HISD_MAPS/83FTbcbor.PDF County Map of Baltimore City] |3.17 MiB , 2004]

The road was laid out to a width of 160 feet (50 m) from Light Street to Locust Point in the early 1910s, providing better access to the new city-owned piers in preparation for increased trade via the Panama Canal and existing steamship lines to Europe. It was named Key Highway because it was originally planned to extend to Fort McHenry, near where Francis Scott Key wrote "The Star-Spangled Banner." [John Wilber Jenkins, The New City of Baltimore, printed in Doubleday, Page & Company, [http://books.google.com/books?id=zegeQtMn9JsC&dq=%22key+highway%22+baltimore The World's Work: A History of Our Time, Volume XXVII, May to October 1914] , p. 586] However, the extenion of the road to the fort was never built. A rail line ran the length of Key Highway, connecting to the tracks in Pratt Street via Light Street. A two-lane extension of the highway and rail line was built in 1930, [National Bridge Inventory database, 2006] branching off the old route east of Ludlow Street and running south under Fort Avenue to McComas Street. [United States Geological Survey, [http://alabamamaps.ua.edu/historicalmaps/us_states/maryland/topos/index.html Baltimore quadrangle, 1943] ] [United States Geological Survey, [http://alabamamaps.ua.edu/historicalmaps/us_states/maryland/topos/armymap.html Baltimore East quadrangle, 1950] ] The short portion of the old road east of the extension is now East Key Highway; the rail tracks have been removed.

References