Do anything often enough and it becomes ho-hum. That’s why it’s easy for veteran Chesapeake travelers to forget the soaring feelings they had during their very first trip across the Bay Bridge.

I’m guilty as the next driver on this count, which is why I’m glad I mentioned to my mother-in-law that I’d be writing about the bridge’s upcoming fiftieth birthday. She immediately went weak at the knees, recalling her one and only trip across the Bay a couple of decades back.

“It was hazy and kind of overcast, and we couldn’t really see very far off into the distance,” she recalled. “There was one spot where we were climbing the bridge and all we could see ahead of us were clouds. It felt like we were driving right into them, right up into the sky, right up into heaven.”

And so we’ll start there: The bridge as breathtaking beauty. This isn’t just a matter of taking in the panoramic views of the Bay and both its shores. The bridge itself is all gentle swoops and graceful geometry. Even its splayed legs have a muscular sort of grandeur. The Bridge is a thing of power, too, of course—structural, financial, political—but we’ll get to all that soon enough.

For now, let’s stick with the view on hot midsummer days, when the shore ahead seems more shimmering dream than imminent destination. So it must have been on July 30, 1952, a day that found Maryland in the midst of a withering heat wave—sixteen consecutive days of temperatures in the 90s. Still, a crowd of nearly 20,000 people made their way to one or the other shore of the Bay to see Governor Theodore McKeldin and former Governor William Preston Lane cut ribbons, make speeches and, finally, drive across the Bay.

That ride marked the end of one momentous journey for Maryland—and the start of another. The stories and the timeline on the pages that follow tell the tale of both those journeys.

1880s: Official histories, newspaper accounts, and oral traditions all date the idea of bridging the Bay to the nineteenth century. But who raised it? And why? No formal plans or proposals survive, so we can’t say for sure who deserves credit for first coming up with the idea.

1907: Railroad is king and new tracks are making it easier for many Eastern Shore businesses to trade by land with Wilmington, Philadelphia, and even New York City than by water with Baltimore. On Sept. 3, 1907, businessman and State Senator Peter C. Campbell proposes rescuing the city’s Eastern Shore trade by building a bridge across the Bay. It isn’t a roadway he wants to build but an electric trolley line stretching from Chestertown to Baltimore.

1909: In the first formal report on the feasibility of a bridge across the Bay, the engineering firm of Westinghouse, Church, Kerr & Co., Inc. endorses not only the trans-Bay trolley line but also envisions a 235-mile network of trolley tracks crisscrossing the Eastern Shore, stopping at scores of burgs and crossroads. The price tag? A cool $13 million. The plan collapses for lack of financing.

1918: Governor Emerson C. Harrington puts the bridge back on the table, this time in the form of a double-decker span between Bay Shore and Tolchester. One level would be for trolley lines, the other for freight trains. Another key figure in the 1918 plan is John E. Greiner, whose engineering firm, J.E. Greiner Co., would go on to design the original span and the second span that opened in 1973. But a combination of cost and complexity eventually kills the double-decker plan.

1919: On June 19, in response to public demand for a more convenient Bay crossing, a ferry service begins operating between Claiborne and Annapolis.

1929: The first plans for a roadway across the Bay between Rock Hall and Tolchester comes close to fruition in the late 1920s. By 1927, both the Maryland legislature and the U.S. Congress sign off on it. The legislature even appropriates nearly $500,000 for preliminary work. But before the project begins, the stock market crashes, launching the Great Depression.

1930s: The bridge project remains on the table throughout this decade, the subject of endless legislative committee meetings and reports. Legislation eventually passes authorizing detailed planning and preliminary work, but before any real work gets under way, a little thing called World War II happens.

1933: One of the most outspoken opponents of the bridge proposal is writer H.L. Mencken, who in a moment of false prophesy, insists in one of his newspaper columns, “There is not the slightest reason to believe that any such structure could ever earn enough to pay the interest and amortization on $10,000,000, to say nothing of the heavy costs of maintenance. There is simply not traffic enough between the Eastern and Western Shores, and there is no evidence that there will ever be enough hereafter.”

Early 1940s: With public clamor growing for an easier way across the Bay, the ferry route is shortened by stopping at Sandy Point instead of downtown Annapolis. The number of ferries working the crossing grows to three and sometimes four. “We had two land crews, one on each side,” recalls former ferry toll collector Warren Coursey. “They had lines of traffic waiting—two, three hours they’d be backed up for that ferry. Of course, when the bridge come on, that backed up pretty soon, too.” As opposition to the proposed bridge mounts on the Eastern Shore, a 1940 dance band pens anti-bridge lyrics to the tune of “The Old Gray Mare.” Sample lyric: “We don’t give a damn for the whole state of Maryland/We’re from the Eastern Shore.”

1946: After the war, bridge plans move south. Kent Island offers Eastern Shore businesses a more central location and better access to growing Washington, D.C. And the military is skittish about plans that put a northern crossing close to the weapons testing facility at Aberdeen Proving Grounds.

1947: A Baltimore Sun editorial notes: “It’s a good thing they didn’t build that trolley bridge forty years ago. It would have been out of date and just a piece of junk now. If they wait another forty years before they build this bridge, they won’t need it. Automobiles will be as out of date as trolley cars. People will have flymobiles and won’t need bridges to cross the bay.”

1948: Governor William Preston Lane is so determined to build the Chesapeake Bay Bridge that critics dismiss the project as “Lane’s Folly.” (The bridge eventually will be renamed in his memory in 1967.) There is some debate about building a combination bridge-tunnel, but its price tag comes in at $7.5 million higher than a bridge alone. By 1948, Congress, the state, and everyone else involved have all signed off on the bridge.

1949: The first shovel hits dirt in January on the western approach road near Sandy Point. Work on the largest-to-date public project in Maryland’s history has finally begun. The first span costs $45 million to build. By comparison, the second span, which opened in 1973, costs $120 million. (And a current plan to clean and repaint the first span, a six-year project scheduled to end in 2005, is projected to cost $72.3 million.)

1950: An issue of Transmitter magazine extolls the futuristic “wireless” telephones being used by crews building the bridge. The pre-cellular mobile phone system is built around one 60-watt transmitter at Sandy Point, two 30-watt mobile stations on tug boats and eleven 10-watt stations on various derricks, diggers, pile drivers, and utility boats. No word on whether the phones cause any construction accidents.

1951: Lou Kelley, who would go on to become known as “Mr. Bay Bridge” during a thirty-nine-year career as patrolman, administrator, and superintendent of the bridge, is just a wide-eyed, young Kent Islander watching the bridge rise over the Bay and wondering what changes are in store for the Eastern Shore. “We were told by some of the old timers not to worry too much about all that,” Kelley says. “They’d tell us, ‘On a hard winter when the ice comes up the bend and the Bay freezes, it’s gonna wipe that bridge out. It’s not gonna be there long—I’ll guarantee you that.’”

July 27, 1952: On the Sunday before the bridge opens—construction crews have the day off, and the bridge looks deserted—the teenaged Lou Kelley lifts his bike over the barricade at the edge of the bridge, determined to be the first person to pedal across. Halfway across, a car pulls up, and the driver commences denouncing Kelley’s dangerous stunt. “Where did you come from?” the man demands. “Kent Island,” the youth replies. To this day, Kelley laments that fact that he didn’t lie and say “Annapolis.” If he had, he could have finished his historic crossing and rode the ferry back. A few years later, Kelley would be working as a bridge patrolman, diligently chasing all manner of trespassers and gate-crashers.

July 30, 1952: On opening day, in addition to the crowd of 20,000, Francis the Talking Mule shows up. Governor Theodore McKeldin and former Governor Lane deliver speeches at Sandy Point, then lead a caravan of twenty-four chartered buses across the bridge. Lane tells the throngs: “The completion of the bridge marks the realization of a dream of over forty years. It is the most outstanding single accomplishment that Maryland has ever undertaken.” Between sightseeing stops and lots of handshaking and backslapping, this first trip across takes more than two and a half hours.

At 6 p.m., the Kent Island-to-Sandy Point ferry begins its last run. Toll collector Warren Coursey says today that he knew it was the end of an era, but he didn’t know how much change the bridge would bring to Kent Island. “I liked it in olden times better,” he says. “But you can’t stop progress.”

Just as the last ferry shoves off, the bridge toll booths open for business. One-way trips cost $1.28 for small cars and $1.54 for larger vehicles, with an additional 25 cents tacked on for each passenger. Omero C. Catan, of New Jersey, is the first paying customer, as he had been time and again over the years at public facilities up and down the East Coast. That’s why everyone calls him “Mr. First.”

Late 1952: After the ferry stops running, Warren Coursey becomes a toll collector on the bridge. In the bridge’s early days, drivers who didn’t have any money were required to leave something of value in lieu of a toll. “Most of the time, it was spare tires and jacks,” Coursey recalls. “But sometimes we got some jewelry or a camera or something.” Drivers had a period of months to reclaim the materials before they went up for sale at a warehouse near the bridge.

July, 1953: On the bridge’s first birthday, at exactly 6 p.m., officials stop the car of retired electrical engineer Frank Stephenson and his passenger, Mabel Adams. Stephenson and Adams are asked to blow out candles and help distribute cake to passing motorists. “I thought I’d robbed a bank or something,” a startled Stephenson tells reporters.

Mid-1950s: Maintenance crews ride back and forth across the bridge to help motorists stranded in broken-down cars. Once in a while, it isn’t a car they need to rescue. One officer gives a lift to a young woman whose angry boyfriend has ordered her out of the car in the middle of the bridge. On several occasions, dogs that had been abandoned on the Eastern Shore made their way onto the bridge in a show of fierce determination to make it back to their Western Shore homes.

Bridge toll collectors hand out free maps in the early days. This practice is halted after too many drivers stayed at the booth, unfolded the map, and demanded that the collectors show them which roads to take. “You’d try to tell them that there were cars waiting on them, and that they had to get moving, but they just wouldn’t leave,” Coursey recalls. “It happened all the time.”

1957: From day one, bridge traffic exceeds expectations. Experts estimate that the bridge will carry 1.1 million vehicles a year at first and grow to 1.5 million by 1961. Instead, nearly 2 million cross in 1953, and by 1957, it’s up to 3 million.

1962: When the bridge was built, state officials estimated it would take forty years to collect $45 million in tolls. They raised $41 million in just ten years. Then they lowered the cost of tolls to $1 a vehicle.

1965: Maryland’s general assembly authorizes funds for parallel span. Construction begins on May 19, 1969.

June 28, 1973: The three-lane westbound span of the bridge opens.

1982: On the occasion of the bridge’s thirtieth birthday, an anonymous Queen Anne’s County resident sums up his feelings of disdain for the bridge and its impact on Eastern Shore life this way: “I wish they could have built it from Baltimore to Ocean City.”

1999: After thirty-nine years of working on the bridge, Lou Kelley retires. He tells everyone that he has one bone to pick with the bridge-using public: “Most people look at government employees as being freeloaders who stand around with their hands in their pockets all day,” he says. “But over the years there was a lot of conscientious people at the bridge that I was proud of. Police rushing around, helping people. Maintenance people, working all those hours in bad weather. Collectors taking tolls from 400 patrons an hour and doing their best to say thank you to every one of them. These were people who were proud of their jobs and proud to do what they could to help others. That’s what I remember more than anything.”

July 30, 2002: The bridge marks the fiftieth anniversary of its muggy opening day. Half a century later, it carries more than 20 million vehicles across the Bay annually—nearly twenty times as many as it did in 1953. Love it or hate it, it’s impossible to imagine life in Maryland without it.

By the Numbers

• The original bridge took three-and-a-half years to build. When it opened, its 4.35-mile length from shore-to-shore made it the third longest bridge in the world and the world’s longest continuous-over-water steel structure.
• Building the bridge involved 17,500 tons of steel piling for 4,130 steel piles; 42,500 tons structural and other steel; 118,000 cubic yards of cement concrete; 2.5 million cubic yards of earth; and 151,400 tons of slope protection stone.
• Designing the bridge with a crescent curve wasn’t simply a matter of getting from Point A to Point B. The bridge needed to meet the Bay shipping channel at a right angle so that ships could navigate their way through it hassle-free. Vertical clearance in the shipping channel is 186 1/2 feet.
• Horizontal clearance is 1,500 feet. The man-made islands at the base of the bridge don’t serve any structural purpose; they’re there mainly to prevent ships from crashing into important structural elements.
• The two suspension towers are 385 feet tall and 2,922 1/2 feet apart. The suspension cables are 14 inches in diameter.
• The ferry system could carry 180 cars per hour across the Bay. The two-lane Bay Bridge handled 1,500 cars per hour. Once the three lanes on the second span opened, that number increased to 3,750 cars per hour.
• In the 1950s, two jeeps patrolled the bridge round-the-clock to assist motorists. In 1952 alone, bridge crews helped change 357 tires, gassed up 293 cars, and extinguished 10 vehicle fires.