For many years, For many years, the Annapolis & Elk Ridge Railroad (A&ER) was Annapolis’ only railroad outlet and arrived relatively early in Maryland’s railroad history. Soon after the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) completed its branch from Baltimore to Washington in 1835, the A&ER came into being to link this line with Annapolis. Incorporated in 1837, the A&ER first planned to start at Elk Ridge Landing, where it could connect not only with the B&O but with ships on the Patapsco River.

That idea changed almost immediately, and instead the route was projected to run west from Annapolis to meet the B&O at a point roughly midway between Baltimore and Washington, to be called Annapolis Junction. Construction started in 1838, and on Christmas Day 1840, the first trains chugged in and out of the West St. station in Annapolis.

The little railroad’s first and biggest excitement came in the opening days of the Civil War. On April 19, 1861, a mob of Southern sympathizers in Baltimore attacked Federal troops moving south to Washington. The infamous Pratt Street Riots left at least 12 dead, and Union commanders decided to bypass the unstable city until they could establish tighter control. So, for a brief time, soldiers were ferried down the Chesapeake Bay to Annapolis, where the A&ER carried them inland.

Nineteenth-century Annapolis was a sleepy old fishing town housing the Naval Academy, a legislature that met briefly every two years, and not much else of note. Between the two terminals were marginal farms and a few small settlements such as Crownsville, Millersville, and Odenton; except for special occasions at the Naval Academy, the passenger business was mostly modest. Furthermore, formidable competition arrived in 1887 in the form of the Annapolis & Baltimore Short Line (later Baltimore & Annapolis Railroad), an almost straight line southeast from Baltimore, which snatched much of the Baltimore-Annapolis trade away from the roundabout A&ER route and its train changes at Annapolis Junction.

Reorganization followed, and, in 1886, the Annapolis & Elk Ridge Railroad emerged as the Annapolis, Washington & Baltimore Railroad (AW&B). But the new identity proved short-lived. Soon after the turn of the century, the railroad’s fortunes abruptly changed. Cleveland, Ohio, entrepreneurs had come east in 1901 to build a new high-speed electric interurban line between Baltimore and Washington, later named the Washington, Baltimore & Annapolis (WB&A), and, in 1903, they bought the AW&B to serve as their Annapolis branch. The two lines crossed just east of Odenton at a point called Naval Academy Junction. The new owners strung electric wires over the old AW&B, and, in 1908, opened their new system.

Beautifully built and fast as it was, the new WB&A had difficulty competing with the well-established B&O and Pennsylvania Railroad, but when World War I started, its resourceful owners landed themselves a temporary bonanza. Gathering up property along the onetime Annapolis & Elk Ridge midway between Odenton and Annapolis Junction, they provided the site for a large Army cantonment called Camp Meade and obtained a monopoly for its passenger business.

Afterward, though, the WB&A continued to struggle. Paved roads and the Depression sealed its doom, and the entire system--including the former A&ER--was abandoned in 1935. The original right-of-way between Annapolis Junction and Odenton remained intact as the B&O and Pennsylvania Railroad’s entry to Fort Meade (as it was called after 1929), but, otherwise, the old A&ER reverted to nature. Even that small section was gone by 1981, leaving only the junction tracks at Annapolis Junction--now part of an aggregates terminal.

Harwood, Herbert H., Jr. Impossible Challenge II: Baltimore to Washington and Harpers Ferry from 1828 to 1994. Baltimore: Barnard, Roberts & Co., 1994.

Merriken, John E. Every Hour on the Hour: A Chronicle of the Washington, Baltimore & Annapolis Electric Railroad. Published jointly by LeRoy O. King Jr., Dallas, and Central Electric Railfans Association, Chicago, 1993.