How The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Changed Maryland Forever (2024)

Lynne Outerbridge’s parents would pack up the car and pile her in with her two sisters, bathing suits and beach towels in tow, before heading south, out of Dundalk, away from the asphalt heat of Baltimore, then onwards east, toward the cool breeze of the Atlantic Ocean.

“We’d go to Ocean City, and with that, you knew, hey, we’re going to the Bay Bridge,” saysOuterbridge, 65, her eyes lighting up behind thin glasses. “You were going to be in traffic, but you’d sit out there and eat snacks and play games—that was part of the experience, you know? It was fun. And when you got to the top, you saw all the boats, all the fishermen, and thought, ‘Oh, isn’t it pretty . . .’”

Years later, while working at the Department of Motor Vehicles, Outerbridge came across an open toll collector position for that very location—about 30 miles from her home in Baltimore County, just north of downtown Annapolis, on the heel of Sandy Point State Park, at the western edge of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. She was hired in 1986, working her way up to shift supervisor and manager before retiring last April, seeing many evolutions of that iconic crossing, from the removal of the westbound tolls to the addition of E-ZPass and the traffic that came with it.

“When I was little, I thought, that looks like it would be an easy job—sit there and take money all day?” Outerbridge remembers. But that was before she descended the stairs into the tunnel that snaked beneath Route 50, climbed up through a tollbooth door, and saw the volume of vehicles, first during the prime-time commute, then more still, during the height of Maryland and Delaware beach season.

“That first summer weekend really shook me, when you looked up and saw it—headlights—as far as the eye can see,” she says. “But you got used to it.”

In fact, Outerbridge preferred the busy shifts. Regulars would bring her coffee, and when traffic stalled, she’d chat with the passersby. “Everyone had a story,” she says, not forgetting the grief she sometimes received from gridlocked travelers. During downtime, she’d read books, and on occasion, play ball in the center plaza with her colleagues until, inevitably, the cars returned.

“The collectors would yell, ‘Here they come!’ and I’d say, ‘Okay, go get it!’” she says. “We raced each other to see who could move the most vehicles.” Her record was 500 an hour.Even on days off, she would find herself there. “My husband and I used to go across all the time for vacation, to the beach, for Bike Week—we still do every year,” says Outerbridge, who recently moved to Pennsylvania. “From up there, you can really see everything. To this day, we get to the top and I say, ‘Hey, that’s my bridge.’”

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here is the Francis Scott Key, and the HanoverStreet, and the Hatem Memorial, but as far asany Marylander is concerned, the WilliamPreston Lane Jr. Memorial Bay Bridge—locatedbetween Annapolis in Anne Arundel Countyand Stevensville in Queen Anne’s—is the Maryland bridge.

Halfway down the state, two silver ribbons of steel andconcrete seem to defy gravity as they float for more thanfour miles across the waters of the wide and majestic ChesapeakeBay, riding high—200 feet above seafaring ships andsailboats, alongside seagulls and osprey, between foggy sunrises and against dazzling sunsets—beforesloping softly into the eastern and western shores,which, from up there, seem to welcome its arrival.

It is the stuff of postcards and license plates,having evolved into a quintessential symbol—a20th-century architectural feat heralded as thegreat connector of the Old Line State.

The truth is, most people either love the bridgeor hate it. For some of the 27 million cars that crosseach year, it is the gateway to vacationland, throughwhich sandy strands and vinegar-splashed bucketsof boardwalk French fries await, no matter thetraffic. For others, it’s a parking lot of taillights, or atowering deathtrap too terrifying to travel. And it's adivision only likely to increase in the days ahead, as the ninth smallest and fifth denseststate continues to grow, and itsofficials discuss what might becomeof this soaring infrastructure that sosparks our emotions.

But now, as it was when the firstcars drove across it 70 years ago thismonth, as it will be with whateveriteration comes next, those iconicspans—in fact two bridges—remainan undeniable threshold. Between an otherwise disconnectedstate. Between economies, industries, and communities along theChesapeake watershed. Between the past and the future. A precipicethat has, for better or worse, forever altered the fate of Maryland.

The original eastbound span, built in 1952. COURTESY OF MARYLAND DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

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ong before the Bay Bridge, the body of water that it wasbuilt to cross served as the region’s primary bond andbarrier. By sheer geography, the Chesapeake Bay dividedthe horseshoe-like landscape, with its limb-like westernand eastern shores separated by the nation’s largestestuary. On either side of those brackish tides, distinct worldsdeveloped based on a variety of factors, such as proximity to tradeand access to natural resources, and with them came wholly uniquecultures, ideologies, and even dialects.

To the west, urban areas like Baltimore City and Annapolisbecame epicenters of industry, transportation, and politics—part ofthe metropolitan corridor near the eventual capital of Washington,D.C. To the east, the nine Maryland counties of the DelmarvaPeninsula, surrounded on all sides by a labyrinth of tributaries andocean, remained resolutely rural, rooted in maritime and agriculturaltraditions, at times even threatening secession into neighboringDelaware and Virginia. “The bay has always isolated us,” says PeteLesher, chief curator of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St.Michaels, “but at the same time, the bay has always connected us.”

Before roads and rails, the bay was the region’s interstatehighway, “a natural artery that helped us get from here to there,”says Lesher, moving people and products between its two shores.During the Colonial era, towns were situated near waterfront portsthat were lifelines to the outside world, and vessels, from schoonersto skipjacks, commonly swapped the seafood and produce of the eastwith the manufactured goods of the west.

But after the Civil War, the Chesapeake Bay became an obstacle. Suddenly train and automobile transportation better connected the Eastern Shore to rivalcities like Wilmington, Philadelphia,and New York via the northern peninsula, whileBaltimore hoped to keep thatvaluable commerce in state.

The first Bay Bridge discussionsdate back to the 1880s, but it wasn’tuntil 1927 that Baltimore businessmenwere authorized to raise fundsfor construction of a crossing betweenMiller Island in BaltimoreCounty and Tolchester in Kent.Those efforts were squandered bythe stock market crash of ‘29, whilea second attempt, mired in argumentsover the location, was put onhold by World War II.

In the meantime, steamboats rose to the occasion, withferries tempting passengers to “save 100 miles” instead ofdriving up and around the headwaters of the Chesapeake, andentire towns were built as rural retreats for urban clientele.The Sandy Point-Matapeake line would become the precursorfor the present-day Bay Bridge, operating at one of thenarrowest distances across the estuary, with notorious queuesof sunburnt beachgoers waiting to head west on Sundays. Atthe on-ramp of the eastbound lane, you can still see remnantsof the old terminal, deteriorated by weather and time, anartifact of another era.

“From the viewpoint of the average citizen, the ChesapeakeBay Bridge project has had a checkered career,” wrote TheSun in 1936. “Is there hope or isn’t there of a bridge evermaterializing?”

Nothing more than “castles in the air,”surmised H.L. Mencken, created by “the artful hand of realtors.”

But after World War II, skeptics would finally be convinced, when in1949, Governor William Preston Lane Jr. broke ground on what wasthen the largest public works project in the state’s history.

The massive undertaking was overseen by the J.E. GreinerCompany of Baltimore, which would also engineer other locallandmarks like the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel and Baltimore-Washington Parkway. Plans calledfor construction of what was then the third longest bridge inthe world and the longest continuous steel structure over water.Rumors quickly spread that it would be too light to be safe, surely to be washed outby the wind and ice of Chesapeake winters.

But engineers deemed the two-lane design, featuring some60,000 tons of steel and 118,000 cubic yards of concrete (allegedlymixed with Baltimore City water for its purity), structurallysound. Sections were built by the Bethlehem Steel Company,then towed down the bay on tugboat barges to floating cranes thatwould lift them into position.

The bridge was actually a series of bridges, consisting of beam,girder, truss, cantilever, and suspension spans, designed to handle 3,000 cars an hour with 354-foot towers and 1,500 tons ofsuspension cables resting on a foundation of 57 concrete piers and4,130 steel pilings pounded some 200 feet into the bay bottom. Atthe water’s surface, boats bound for the Port of Baltimore wereprovided 186 by 1,600 feet to navigate the shipping channel, afactor that necessitated the bridge’s elegant 90-degree curve.

“I’d never seen anything like it,” says Timothy Hyman, 84,who started his 66-year career as staff photographer for theMaryland State Highway Administration at age 12, documentingthe construction of both spans. “I walked that bridge from oneend to the other, many times, before there were even roads, usingland, sea, and air to get my shots. . . . I was one of the manyunsung people who worked on the bridge, then got out of the way.”

In the end, the bridge took three and a half years and morethan six million man-hours to complete, carried out by more than2,000 laborers from both shores, some of whom lived in a floatinghotel at a nearby pier during construction. It cost $45 million, witha commemorative issue of this magazine hailing it “one of thegreatest structures ever built.”

“It is a vital link in a fast-growing network of superhighwaysserving an ever-increasing volume of private automobile, bus, and truck traffic along the Atlantic seaboard, Maine to Florida,” wroteThe Sun the weekend before its opening—one that is “expectedto have a profound impact on the economy of the state, and inparticular on that of the nine Eastern Shore counties.”

On the hot summer morning of July 30, 1952, an estimated10,000 people crowded Sandy Point to watch as then-GovernorTheodore McKeldin, wearing a light suit and striped tie, cut a silk ribbon and freed the way for trafficon the brand-new Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Red, white, andblue buntings hung from the tollbooth plaza while a police-ledmotorcade made its way up the span. At the top, cars pulled overfor passengers to look down, take pictures, and throw pennies into the bay.

“It is more than just a great, new bridge, modern in type andhighly useful in purpose,” said McKeldin that day. “It is a symbolof America. It is industrial progress.”

The first cars cross the bay following opening ceremonies on July 30, 1952. AP Images

In the first 72 hours, nearly 30,000 vehicles crossed thebridge in an average six minutes at 40 miles per hour for a tollprice of $1.40. Long lines backed up on both sides with motoristseager to get a look at the new crossing, while several cars ran outof gas, got flat tires, and even burst into flames. Others droveslowly, taking in the view for some 20 miles in either direction.In fact, it was supposedly up there that executives of the National Bohemian beer company invented the state’s “Land of PleasantLiving” nickname. On the other side, state police declared thatthe Eastern Shore “had never seen more traffic.”

That record, of course, would soon be broken. For years,countless advertisem*nts tied to the new bridge ran in TheSun papers, promoting real estate, recreation, and relaxationfrom Kent Island to Ocean City. Among those Eastern Shorecommunities was a mix of excitement and apprehension.

“What the ferries did to some extent but what the bridgedoes with an exclamation point is strengthen those ties toBaltimore,” says Lesher, also a Talbot County councilman. “Thesteamboats are on borrowed time, the railroads are struggling,and the highways are what’s going to connect us, making it somuch easier to travel back and forth. And of course, the morelanes you add, and the more traffic that can cross, the strongerthose bonds become.”

By the mid-1960s, new debate had already begun about asecond parallel span, with traffic reports stating the first wouldreach its maximum capacity by the summer of 1967 whenSunday traffic headed west from the ocean. Critics claimedthat the State Roads Commission was not considering the whole picture and accused then-Governor J. Millard Tawes of porkbarrelingto seal the votes to build.

The public voted down the addition in 1966, but it was approveda year later via an emergency bill by the General Assembly undernew Governor Spiro Agnew. Mired in mounting costs, delays, andcontroversy, the second span nonetheless managed to open withthree lanes just north of the first on June 28, 1973, costing $148million and funded by revenue bonds to be paid back by toll dollars,like the first.

(Just months later, in an ironic twist, Agnew, nowRichard Nixon’s vice president, would be forced to resign followinga criminal investigation into kickbacks to his associates, includingthe State Roads chairman and a Greiner Company affiliate with whom he purchased107 acres of land near the bridge.)

By this time, Ocean City was in the midst of a major transformation intoMaryland’s Jersey Shore. Once a sleepy resort town and fishing villagein Worcester County, the 10-mile barrier island had only grown by259 year-round residents after the first bridge, but following thesecond it more than quadrupled, to 6,900 residents today.

And were it not for Mother Nature there might have been twosuch towns in the same vicinity. Plans for “Ocean Beach,” a 15-mile resort community dreamed up by Western Shore investorsalong a “Baltimore Boulevard,” were permanently washed outby a winter storm and, in 1965, Congress established that sameland as the Assateague Island National Seashore.

The Atlantic seaside was an especially meaningfuldestination for another governor, William Donald Schaefer,who had grown tired of sitting in traffic on the way to his summer trailerin Ocean City. In 1987, he announced his seminal “Reach theBeach” initiative, which would add express lanes to the BayBridge, widen Route 50, and establish a travel hotline.

Though considered a success, not everyone was a fanof Schaefer’s big ideas. “Spending all that taxpayer moneyon U.S. 50 and calling it a ‘Reach the Beach’ program isequivalent to widening the Jones Falls Expressway undera ‘Get to Pennsylvania Faster’ sign,” wrote The Sun’s PeterJensen in 1991. “Most hardcore Shoremen would like to blowup the Bay Bridges and let the fool chicken-neckers swim.”

Not that Schaefer always loved them back. “How’s thatsh*thouse of an Eastern Shore?” he was once overheard askinga local delegate, leading a band of angry residents to bring a parade ofwooden outhouses and bags of manure to the State House.

Secretary Harry Hughes takes the first Bay Bridge toll. Courtesy of MDTA

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hether they liked it or not, the Eastern Shorewould experience a watershed moment with theBay Bridge, as projected by The New York Times in1952: “It is expected to bring the Eastern Shoreand the Western Shores of the state...intocloser unity of thought and habit, and to work other importantsocial and economic changes—all in time, of course,”particularly in counties along the beach corridor.

The crossings opened the floodgates for tourism andrecreation, expanded markets for its pride-and-joy produceand seafood, increased populations with newfoundcommuter access to more job opportunities on the WesternShore, and with it, diversified mindsets in a region reluctantto give up Jim Crow. Since 1970, Queen Anne’s County grewfrom 18,500 to 50,163 residents, whereas just south, TalbotCounty jumped 19,428 to 37,626 since 1950, even as emptybeaches now stand where forgotten ferry-era resorts likeTolchester and Claiborne once prospered.

Before he moved to Queen Anne’s full-time in 2000,resident Jay Falstad had been traveling across the Bay Bridgesince 1976, watching mom-and-pop restaurants like Holly’s inGrasonville give way to Royal Farms gas stations and the oldKent Narrows drawbridge get buried beneath an overpass.

“Route 50 used to be a country highway, but it’s notone any longer,” says Falstad, director of the Queen Anne’sConservation Association, established in 1969 to protectthe county’s natural resources and rural character, notablythrough legal challenges to the Four Seasons retirementcondominiums in Chester, which might be the largest subdivision in the Chesapeake Bay’s Critical Areas. “Our biggest fearis not just what a new crossing would do to Queen Anne’s County, butthe entire Delmarva Peninsula.”

Falstad first got involved with the Bay Bridge in 2016, when GovernorLarry Hogan announced a two-tier, multi-year National Environmental PolicyAct (NEPA) study, which sought to identify the best site for a new baycrossing from 14 potential locations up and down the estuary, in orderto address the current and projected traffic. According to the Tier1 study, in 2017, the bridge carried about 68,600 vehicles per day withthree hours of congestion on non-summer weekdays, and 118,600vehicles with 19 hours of congestion on summer weekends. By 2040,the state projects those an increase to seven and 22 hours, respectively.

Two years into the process, Hogan let his preferencebe known, disheartening some Anne Arundel and QueenAnne’s residents already beleaguered by the bridge and relievingother communities who had been scrambling to protect theirshorelines: “There is only one option I will ever accept: adding athird span to our existing Bay Bridge,” he tweeted in 2019.

And this April, he got his wish, when the Maryland TransportationAuthority (MDTA) and Federal Highway Administration officiallychose that 22-mile Corridor 7—just west of the Severn River Bridge inParole to the U.S. 301-Route 50 split in Queenstown—said to likely bethe cheapest, least environmentally impactful, and most congestion-relievingof all the potential routes.

No one will know exactly what that crossing will look like until theend of the multi-year Tier 2 study, which has yet to begin. A thirdspan, a whole new replacement bridge, or even a bridge-tunnel haveall been thrown around, estimated to cost up to $13.1 billion, in 2020 dollars. In Tier 1, a high-speed rail line was eliminated as an alternative, deemed too expensive for further review—though the estimated cost is unknown—while rejuvenatedferry and bus service were found unlikely to adequatelyreduce congestion as stand-alone options.

The latter two, in addition to other alternatives, such asvariable toll rates for peak hours or high-occupancy vehiclelanes, could be considered in some combination in Tier 2,though likely still in conjunction with new construction. Inthe meantime, some improvements have been made, from theremoval of Outerbridge’s beloved toll plaza for an all-electronicmodel, and this fall’s replacement of rudimentary orange barrelswith automated gates for contraflow—aka thattwo-way traffic.

“This has been a very highly seen project forthe region and, as you can imagine, we received the gamut ofpublic comments,” says Heather Lowe, MDTA project managerfor the NEPA study. “But we heard loud and clear that the congestionat the Bay Bridge now is a problem.”

Environmentalists and community activists don’t disagree.

“The traffic congestion is a problem and it needs asolution, not in 2040, but now,” says Steve Kline, presidentof the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy and Centreville TownCouncil, whose grandfather was a Sparrows Point iron workeron the first span. “However, we do not believe that a new Bay Bridgesolves this problem any more durably than the previousbridge. A two-lane bridge was not sufficient for very long. Afive-lane bridge has proven to not be sufficient for very long.If we add more lanes, how long will that be sufficient? Maybeit can make traffic at the bridge half as bad—for 10 years. Butthen it’s going to be right back to where it is now, and peoplewill be sitting here having this same debate.”

Kline is referencing the economic concept of “induceddemand,” which has found that the initial benefits ofcongestion relief fade within a decade, simply drawing in morecars and filling the new capacity. (See: The Baltimore Beltway.)

“If you build it, they will come,” says Erik Fisher, land-useplanner for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation,who hopes the state will work to offset a new crossing’senvironmental impacts, to bestudied in Tier 2, such as habitat loss and waterpollution in a region at the forefront of climatechange. “We know more roads bring more cars.We need to think more broadly about how to getpeople where they want and need to go withoutforever expanding the pavement. We’re not building an interstate all the way to Ocean City.”

Which brings us to the great paradox: How doyou alleviate traffic—including the GPS-stymiedsideroads that block emergency vehicles and hinderhomeowners from leaving their houses on summerweekends—without increasing developmentpressure in a place sought out for its rural nature?

The answer is unclear, and fingers get pointedover who created the problem in the first place.

“The bridge is not the problem—development’sthe problem,” says Secretary of Transportation Jim Ports, whospend summers driving to the beach from Baltimore City. “I mean, Ocean Citybecomes the second largest city in the state during the summer.. . . The expansion of Queen Anne’s County, of Anne ArundelCounty, of other shore counties, as well as Ocean City, is whatcreated the overcapacity problem. . . . And they’re continuingto expand now while they know it’s a problem. It’s not going tostop, whether we build a bridge or not,” emphasizing that land-useplanning takes place “on the local level.”

“Land use should begin at the local level, but when thestate makes the decision to invest billions of dollars into atransportation system to an area, they’re making a decisionfor the local folks,” counters Anne Arundel County ExecutiveSteuart Pittman. “They’re putting additional developmentpressure on the localities by doing so, and they know that.”

Still, there are mixed messages from these small towns, whoon the one hand want to keep their pastoral charm, andwhose local governments on the other make decisions thatput that very character at risk. In Queen Anne’s, where morethan 70 percent of the workforce commutes out of county,land use for commercial real estate, high-density housing,and transportation has increased by 24, 30, and 696 percent,respectively, since 1973—when the second span was built—taking 21,000 acres of farmland withit. And in 2020, the Talbot County Council (minus Lesher) gavethe greenlight to the controversial Lakeside development thatwould bring 2,501 homes to Trappe, population 1,228. Andthen there’s Ocean City.

“The question that nobody’s asking, except for maybe acouple Wicomico County commissioners, is can the beaches,which are already crowded, already having an incrediblydifficult time finding staff, accommodate or handle induceddemand?” poses ESLC’s Kline, who calls the traffic a “16-week-a-year problem.” “How much more can we love these beachcommunities before it perhaps becomes a problem of lovingthem too much?”

Ninety-seven percent of buildable land has been developedin Ocean City, which includes more than 10,000 hotel rooms.And updates to West Ocean City’s sewer and water servicecould prime the former suburb for further spillover.

“I think there’s still room to grow here,” says Ocean CityMayor Rick Meehan, a Coldwell Banker real estate agent,estimating that the majority of his town’s now eight millionannual visitors come from the Bay Bridge, though others alsoundoubtedly arrive via the expanded Route 1 in Delaware. “Ithink the pleasurable culture of the Eastern Shore is affectedtoday by the current capacity issues. . . . [A new bridge] will becertainly more beneficial than it will be detrimental.”

Meehan has signed on to a coalition of officialsfrom 12 of Maryland’s 23 counties, some of whom havespecifically asked for a replacement bridge featuring aminimum of eight lanes, larger than the six-lane BrooklynBridge and San Francisco Golden Gate.

“Will there be more traffic? There always will be moretraffic,” says the group’s founder and Queen Anne’scommissioner-at-large Jim Moran, who owns a concrete company inCrofton. “Going from five lanes to eight lanes with shouldersfor safety reasons will allow that traffic to flow,” adding that the number does indeed factor in future growth.

The exact scale of a prospective future crossing will be decided sooner thanoriginally thought, as this June, Governor Hogan announced thathe would be fully funding the $28-million Tier 2 NEPA study. “People havekicked the can down the road for literally decades . . . no oneever took the steps to say, how are we going to fix this, andthat’s just what we’ve decided to do,” says Hogan. “This really hasto do with the health of the entire state.”

Hogan, who is nearing the end of his final term, hasmade the bridge corridor a top priority of his administration,paving the way to the beach through Route 404 expansion,Salisbury bypass upgrades, and funding for the congestedOcean City Expressway. For the record, his Annapolis-basedreal estate company, currently owned by a non-blind trustand run by his brother, Timothy, also has multiple developmentprojects in Anne Arundel County and on the EasternShore, among other locations.

“You have to ask yourself: With so many unansweredquestions, why the rush?” says QACA’s Falstad, who hopes that thestate will exhaust its transportation management strategiesand non-car alternative options before constructing a multi-billion-dollarcrossing. “There are other projects in Maryland that I’msure Larry Hogan can put his name on. This doesn’t need to beone of them.”

The NEPA study’s final results will come down to the consideration of Maryland’s next governor, but in the meantime, Secretary Ports says managing the bridge, now and in the future, boilsdown to sheer volume. These days, 91 percent of commutingadults use a personal vehicle, and car ownership, increasinglyelectric or self-driving or not, continues to outpace people. The affordable $2.50 base toll—compared to the $5 Delaware Memorial or the $14 Bay Bridge-Tunnel in Virginia—likely doesn’t hurt, either.

“It’s a difficult task and you get a lot of criticism, but atthe end of the day, we could do nothing, and it would reallyback up,” he says. “As I’ve told people on both sides of the shore: If you can tell me how to put eight gallons of water into afive-gallon bucket, I’m all ears. That’s the traffic problem that wehave on the bridge—there’s just too many cars trying to go at thesame time for two or three lanes of traffic. Period.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY JAY FLEMING

All the while, amid the clamor, the 70- and 49-year-oldbridges stand quietly above the Chesapeake. This MemorialDay weekend, sailboats passed between thespans below and watermen loitered around the pierswhile a projected 330,000 cars drove across the top.

A stone’s throw from the old ferry pier sits a brick MDTA buildingjust south of Sandy Point, and inside, the office of Bay Bridgeadministrator Richard Jaramillo faces that incessant flow of traffic.

From this vantage point, Jaramillo conducts the round-the-clockorchestra that is keeping both bridges as safe and operational aspossible. He coordinates with some 100 colleagues—from policeand emergency response departments to maintenance andconstruction teams to the 24/7 operations command center—whotogether oversee everything from clearing debris to cleaning upaccidents to inspecting the superstructure from top to bottom.At all hours, they assess weather and wind conditions, controlnavigational lights for ships and airplanes, and monitor more than14 video surveillance cameras.

“It’s a juggling act that goes on constantly, every day, by theminute,” says Jaramillo, who sometimes gets stuck in the backupshimself while commuting from Kent Island, “just like everyoneelse—we all share the pain.”

It’s a polarizing position, he knows, being at the helm of thisbridge, even recalling one woman he dated before her father foundout his job title: “We’re not seeing each other any longer.”

Despite his intimate knowledge, Jaramillo has no official preferencefor its future, though he regularly attends meetings for the BayBridge Reconstruction Advisory Group between state officials andcommunity members, certain to be involved in whatever comes next.

“Richard is just here to make sure the traffic gets through safelyand efficiently,” he says with a broad smile. “You deal me the cardsand I’ll figure out how to make it work.”

For now, both spans are in fine condition, as they should beuntil 2065, says Jaramillo, who even once climbed the suspension cablesall the way to the tippy-top.

“It was an experience, everything was moving, and it’s supposedto,” he says. From way up there, “it gives you a whole different level of respect andappreciation—for the people who built it, who designed it, whowork on it today.”

People like photographer Timothy Hyman, who stood there more than70 years ago, before that bridge had become the bridge.

“When I tell people what I did, they don’t believe me,then I show them the pictures,” says Hyman, sitting amongst them. “I walked with mycamera, and there I was...”