A group of excited residents gathered Saturday to celebrate an important Maryland road by recreating a picture taken during its dedication in 1922.
“Hey what’s so big about a road, right? Back then it was everything,” James Ports, the Maryland Secretary of Transportation, said.
A century ago, Upper Marlboro was on the verge of something big. The town was already 200 years old, but the 1922 ceremony at the intersection of what’s now Old Crain Highway and Main Street, was about the one-time port town’s future, and the vision of a Charles County farmer and lawyer named Robert Crain.
In 1917, when smaller southern Maryland farmers put their product on a train to get it to Baltimore, Robert Crain saw a better way than the expensive method.
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“He really wanted to make sure that all his cohorts, all his farmer friends could get their produce to Baltimore in a very cost effective way,” archivist Brian Callicott said. “He was a visionary. He saw that the cars were exploding. He said this is the way we’re going to do it.”
And since cars need roads, Crain went about fighting for state money for a 33-mile stretch to Baltimore. Five years later it was complete.
“It was a big deal to put concrete. They all did it by hand. They had shovels and picks, and it was just little by little,” Callicott said.
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The cost was the equivalent of $21 million in today’s money. But the opportunity to gather in 2022 at the monument to celebrate a monumental task - well, that’s priceless.
So, hundreds showed up at the Crain Monument to recreate the 100-year-old picture.
“It was really amazing. I saw the original photo, so I wanted to be part of this one,” Devon Antwine, of Upper Marlboro, said.
That picture was left to the town by the late Maryland Sen. Mike Miller upon his passing. The modern recreation will go into a time capsule, and Crain Highway will be credited with keeping the local economy on the road.
“This road was and still is an economic driver that keeps southern Maryland open for business,” Ports said.
