MD -- Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Trail:
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- WBA_220303_05.JPG: Right Tree / Right Place
- WBA_220303_11.JPG: Five-lined Skink
- WBA_220303_18.JPG: American Bullfrog
- WBA_220303_21.JPG: Eastern Painted Turtle
- WBA_220303_25.JPG: Dragonflies
- WBA_220303_31.JPG: Great Blue Heron
- WBA_220303_39.JPG: Red-winged Blackbird
- WBA_220303_74.JPG: The Washington, Baltimore & Annapolis Railroad History
Washington, Baltimore & Annapolis (WB&A) Railroad began operating in February 1908. At the time, it was a state-of-the-art interurban rail line with electric trains traveling as fast as 70 miles per hour. Stops along the trail were located at Bowie, Lloyd, Highbridge, Hillmeade, Bell, Randle (Glenn Dale Hospital), Lincoln, Buena Vista, and Cherry Grove. Trains ran every one-half hour between destinations. Despite the fact that the railroad was rarely profitable, service was excellent. It was fast and on time.
- WBA_220303_85.JPG: In 1909, a Washington-to-Baltimore round trip ticket cost $1.25 and travel took only 65 minutes one way...
- Wikipedia Description: Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Trail
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Trail (WB&A) is a 10.25-mile (16.50 km) long discontinuous rail trail from Lanham to Odenton in Maryland. Despite its name, it does not actually connect with Washington, D.C., Annapolis or Baltimore; its name is taken from the Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Electric Railway, from which the right-of-way comes. The trail exists in two separate pieces, one in Anne Arundel County and the other in Prince George's County, separated by the lack of a bridge over the Patuxent River. The bridge's construction and the trail's alignment was delayed for over a decade due to a property dispute; however, the trail was realigned and plans exist to complete a bridge by 2021. Additional plans exist to extend the trail southward to the Washington, D.C. border.
The WB&A Trail makes up part of both the East Coast Greenway - from Calais, Maine to Key West, Florida - and the American Discovery Trail - from the Atlantic coast of Delaware to San Francisco, California. ...
History
The trail derives its name from the now defunct Washington, Baltimore and Annapolis Electric Railway along whose right-of-way the trail now runs. From 1908 through 1935, state-of-the-art electric commuter trains ran along this route carrying passengers between Washington, DC, and Baltimore. The same railroad's right of way also serves as the basis for the Baltimore & Annapolis Trail and the Odenton Bike Path.
In the mid-1980s, Morris Warren, a Prince George's County trail advocated began pushing the county to turn the railroad right-of-way into a trail, founding the Prince George's WB & A Trail Club prior to 1991. In July 1991, Prince George's County Executive Parris N. Glendening announced definitive plans to open that county's section of trail, and later that year, the entire ROW from Baltimore to Lanham was included in the Baltimore-Washington Grenway. Around the same time Anne Arundel County began planning what was originally known as the West County Trail (WCT) along a piece of the right-of-way between Prince George's and Odenton. It showed up in Maryland planning material as early as 1992. In 1994, 4.1 miles of the railroad right-of-way in Anne Arundel County was given to the county for the WCT by Constellation Real Estate to meet open space and recreational space requirements as part of their development of Piney Orchard. The right-of-way in Prince George's county, parts of which were owned by Amtrak, the state of Maryland and the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission was purchased in 1995, clearing the way for construction. In the same year, Anne Arundel County finished the West County Trail Master Plan.
In Anne Arundel County, a dispute over the ownership of the section near the Patuxent River began to emerge as trail construction became imminent. The WB&A railroad ran alongside a plot of land belonging to Buz Meyer, a local conservationist, outdoors enthusiast and trail opponent. Meyer and his brother Robert had long argued that the trail would be a source of crime stating that "unprotected hiker-biker trails evolve into mugger-thugger trails" and that it would bring "unbridled bandits" to the area. Meyer argued that the deed granting the right-of-way to the railroad included a stipulation that it would revert to the Meyers if the tracks went unused, the county believed that it held a "good deed" to the land and in May 2001, they sued Meyer as the first step in the condemnation process. The county was trying to resolve the issue prior to a June 20, 2001 deadline for nearly $1 million in state funding. Despite thinking they had bought the railroad, the county withdrew the lawsuit in late June 2001 after a letter writing campaign by other hunters. County officials decided to find an alternate route to the Patuxent.
The first section of the trail, in Prince George's County, a 5.6-mile (9.0 km) long stretch from MD 450 in Glenn Dale to Race Track Road in Bowie, opened on November 8, 2000. This section was extended 1100 feet northeast from Race Track Road to the Patuxent River in 2005. Once it became clear that the bridge across the Patuxent River would not be located at the point where the old railroad bridge had been, PG County built a 1.3 mile trail spur to the point where the bridge would be built and a little beyond it where it will one day connect with Phase 9 of the Bowie Heritage Trail. This WB&A Trail Spur opened in early 2016.
Construction of the Anne Arundel portion of the trail started in 2003 with four phases, later expanded to five. Phase I started with a 2.3-mile (3.7 km) long section, in Anne Arundel County through Odenton which opened in 2004, linking Waugh Chapel Road to Strawberry Lake Way, both located in Piney Orchard. Phase Ib extended the trail another two miles (3 km) northeast in 2006 to connect Waugh Chapel Road to Odenton Road. Phase II extended the trail 1.3 miles from Strawberry Lake Way to Conway Road and opened in November 2007. It incorporated two bridges, including one passing over the Little Patuxent River. Part of Phase IV, which is not built on the rail right-of-way but as a sidepath along Strawberry Lake Way, was completed by June of 2008, the rest to Annapolis Road will be constructed in the future. Phase III took the trail 1.7 miles farther south from Conway Road to the shores of the Patuxent River was completed in 2016 and opened on June 2, 2016.
In July 2019, Boy Scout Young Min Miller of Troop 1212 created 6 benches spread out amongst the trail, in order to complete his Eagle Scout project. Each bench serves the Prince George's County portion of the trail, with the first bench near Electric Avenue, and last bench nearing the terminus of the trail at Race Track Road.
Meanwhile, the Odenton Bike path, which will partially connect the WB&A Trail to the South Shore Trail, opened in 2003.
Future
The trail is currently discontinuous due to the gap between the Prince George's side and the Anne Arundel side; there is no bridge over the Patuxent River as of 1 January 2021. Anne Arundel County has received a Bikeways Program grant for 80% of the estimated cost for bridge design. Prince George's County and Anne Arundel County will share equally the 20% match. The Anne Arundel County Department of Public Works will manage the design effort for the bridge. There are currently plans for a 544-foot bridge between the two approaches, including the 160-foot main span over the Patuxent. The contract is anticipated to be awarded in summer 2021, after which construction will commence in the fall.
The second part of Phase IV of the trail will build a 2.06 mile spur east of the current trail north from the intersection of Strawberry Lake Way and Waugh Chapel Road, through the Odenton Natural Area and then across the school grounds of Arundel High School and Middle School to Phase II of the South Shore Trail.
In addition to the WB&A Trail, the South Shore Trail, built along right of way of the same railroad, will eventually connect the trail to Annapolis; and the Bowie Heritage Trail will connect it to Bowie State University and the Bowie MARC station.
An extension of the trail north along the old WB&A right-of-way, paralleling the existing road, all the way to the BWI Trail, was included in the 1995 West County Trail Master Plan and the 2002 Severn Small Area Plan, but not in the 2013 Anne Arundel County Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan. In the Fall of 2019, the county began a two-year feasibility study of what they called the BWI to Odenton Trail.
An extension of the trail south to the Marvin Gaye Park Trail in Washington, DC, along Maryland Route 704, is in both the Prince George's County 2009 and 2016 Bicycle Master Plan. A feasibility study of this extension was conducted in 2018.
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