Did you know: Origin of roads in So. MD?

Dennis Griffith’s 1794 map of St. Mary’s County, MD road pattern for approximately 200 years.

Southern, MD – Most people don’t realize or are unaware of the fact, from Maryland’s very beginning, its roadways were the waterways. Roads barely existed in colonial times.

People got from Point A to Point B by boat or not at all. Travel could be stymied for days by inclement weather.

The earliest roads in Maryland were pathways originally Native American in nature.
The first road dates 1639, ‘Mattapany Path’, an Indian trail that led from St. Mary’s City to the Patuxent River. St. Mary’s City was originally the Indian village of Yoacomico and the path led to the Mattapanient Indians, a tribe that lived near present-day NAS Patuxent River.

See: /articles/1016/do-you-know-the-indian-name-places-in-maryland.html

A colonial path leading from St. Clements Manor, a huge tract owned by Thomas Gerard in the 17th century in St. Mary’s County’s Seventh District to Chaptico was known as the Chaptico Indian Path.

The path led through areas long lost to time with the curious names of Wolf Trap and Ironstone Hill.

It wasn’t until 1674—forty years after the founding of Maryland—that legislation was enacted “for amending ways out of Charles County into the City of St. Mary’s.”
The prompting factor was the establishment of a grist mill at the headwaters of the Wicomico River. A mill for grinding grain into flour was a valuable commodity in those days. The limitations of travel presented several problems for growth.

How to get the grain to the mill and back again was the question. Travel by water had its perils. A road system would ensure safer transfer of the precious and fragile commodity.

Charles and St. Mary’s counties were ordered by the legislation to construct a road that would be “passable for horse and foote over such place of Zachiah Swamp (today known as Zekiah) within two miles of said mill.”

This footprint paved the way for the later plans and establishment of Route 234. The original road running from Newport in Charles County to Point Lookout in St. Mary’s was reengineered and diverted from its initial route in the mid-20th century.

The Patuxent Main Road ran along the eastern crest of St. Mary’s County which led from Point Lookout to Cool Springs in Charlotte Hall. This was known to exist in 1692 and when a reference is found in the Maryland Archives. It is possible, that this was also an Indian path.

Eight years later in 1704, the Patuxent Main Road would receive a new name: Three Notch Road.

Legislation enacted in Annapolis required that “public roads” be established throughout the region.

The system they uniquely created to designate the road, which was 20 feet wide from one end to the other, was established by carving notches on trees to mark the road. This was a fact throughout the state of Maryland in the established counties of St. Mary’s, Charles, Calvert, Prince George’s and Anne Arundel.

Ferry’s, county court houses and churches were designated by specifically carved marks and colors. The varied patterns represented different things.

The 1704 law determined that “three notches of equal distance marked on the trees” denoted a road leading to a ferry.

It was this specific set of marks that help give ‘Three Notch Road’ its special name.
Two notches with a third notch a distance above the other two marked roads leading to courthouses, where a slip cut down the face of a tree near the ground was the designation for a church.

This initial pattern served Southern Maryland for 200 years until 1923. After that time, Maryland State Roads Commission transitioned to a modern gravel road, which was 15-feet wide from Mechanicsville to Oakville. The commission later extended road work south to Friendship School Road the next year.

Construction on Three Notch Road began in earnest in 1926, and by 1935 was linked as far south as Ridge.

Asphalt surfaces on roads in Southern Maryland did not emerge until the establishment of the Naval Air Station Patuxent River, during World War II. The new road surfaces were deemed necessary to transport traffic and supplies to the new base in support of the war efforts. It was during this period when original roads were altered, unnecessary curves removed to create a straight thoroughfare. Paving began in 1943 and continued through 1944, creating the first actual paved highways in St. Mary’s County.

The road which began with just three notches carved on a tree.

Contact Joseph Norris at joe.norris@thebaynet.com