6 route & road-trip ideas
The grandest of routes into or out of Baltimore, Historic Charles Street follows the city s best known artery through fashionable cultural, residential, and commercial districts. Visit Charles Street, and you’ll want to stay a while.
Explore this route →
The Chesapeake Country Scenic Byway offers an epic journey through an unspoiled landscape that has shaped the lifestyles and livelihoods of generations of Watermen, shipbuilders, and farmers. This largely unchanged landscape makes it easy for visitors to imagine earlier times when goods were shipped to Baltimore in wooden barrels aboard schooners. The byway acts as a destination unto itself— it is the best way to travel through the extraordinary landscapes and waterscapes of the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The byway experience stretches from its upper Eastern Shore terminus – the picturesque Chesapeake and Delaware Canal to its lower shore recreational terminus at Smith Island.
Explore this route →
This byway brings to life the stories of the Underground Railroad, a secret network of roads, waterways, trails, and hiding places along which enslaved African-Americans were helped to freedom before the Civil War.
Explore this route →
The Historic National Road was the nation's first federally funded interstate highway. It opened the nation to the west and became a corridor for the movement of goods and people. Today, visitors experience a physical timeline, including classic inns, tollhouses, diners, and motels that trace 200 years of American history.
Explore this route →
The 180-mile corridor of the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Byway through Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia is Where America Happened. It is said that this corridor holds more historic sites than any other in the US.
Explore this route →
This byway, with several branches that reach toward the Potomac River, incorporates many of the nation s oldest churches, the site of the first Roman Catholic Mass held in English-speaking America, and Maryland s colonial capital, Historic St. Mary s City.
Explore this route →Multistate routes appear in each relevant state. Some entries describe a byway, others a selected stretch or a broader road trip; routes can overlap.