page_title: Maryland Route 210
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Maryland Route 210 / History
caption_attribution_description: English: View south along Maryland State Route 210 (Indian Head Highway) at Oxon Run Drive in Glassmanor, Prince Georges County, Maryland
context_page_description: Maryland Route 210 is a state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. Known as Indian Head Highway, the highway runs 20.86 miles from Potomac Avenue in Indian Head north to the District of Columbia boundary in Forest Heights, where the highway continues into Washington as South Capitol Street. MD 210 is a four- to six-lane divided highway that connects Washington with the suburban communities of Oxon Hill, Fort Washington, and Accokeek in southwestern Prince George's County, and Bryans Road and Indian Head in northwestern Charles County. The highway also provides access to Fort Washington Park and Indian Head Naval Surface Warfare Center and, in conjunction with MD 228, connects Waldorf with Interstate 95, I-495, and I-295.
  Indian Head Highway was constructed by the U.S. federal government as a military access highway in the mid-1940s to connect Washington with the Indian Head Naval Proving Ground and Fort Washington. The previous highway between Washington and Indian Head was Livingston Road, which was traced in the late 18th century and improved in the 1920s and early 1930s as MD 224. The new highway incorporated several sections of meandering MD 224 into its straight path.
context_section_description: The main highway along the Washington–Indian Head corridor before the construction of Indian Head Highway was Livingston Road, which follows much of the course of a road that has connected Charles County and the District of Columbia parallel to the eastern shore of the Potomac River through Prince George's County since the late 18th century. The road became more important as the highway connecting Washington with both Fort Washington and Fort Foote and later the Indian Head Naval Proving Ground, a gunpowder factory and testing area started by the U.S. Navy in the late 19th century. At its southern end at Mason Springs, Livingston Road was connected to Indian Head by the La Plata–Indian Head road that later became MD 225. At the District of Columbia boundary in what is now Forest Heights, Livingston Road continued north to Atlantic Street, which connected with Nichols Avenue (now Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue), which headed north to a crossing of the Anacostia River at the site of the 11th Street Bridges.
  The first segment of Livingston Road in Maryland to be paved as a modern highway was from the District of Columbia boundary south to Oxon Hill Road in Oxon Hill, which was paved by Prince George's County with state aid as a macadam road by 1910. A part of this piece of highway later became the northernmost part of Indian Head Highway. Construction of Livingston Road as a modern highway was completed in 1933, when the highway became part of MD 224. Other segments of Livingston Road that were reconstructed as part of Indian Head Highway were from Kerby Hill Road south to Palmer Road and from the Charles–Prince George's county line west to Bryans Road, which were both constructed as gravel roads in 1923. The westernmost portion of Indian Head Highway in the town of Indian Head was a reconstruction of Strauss Avenue, a part of which remains as a street that splits off and parallels MD 210 through the eastern part of the town. By 1934, MD 224 was proposed to be widened from 16 to 20 feet (4.9 to 6.1 m) from Oxon Hill to Piscataway. The need for upgrades to Livingston Road became acute by 1940 with the greatly increased activity at Fort Washington and the Indian Head Naval Powder Factory in the years before the United States entered World War II.
  Indian Head Highway was constructed as a highway on a new alignment in several segments during World War II. Two portions of the highway in Charles County were built by 1944: from the Strauss Avenue split east to approximately the MD 225 intersection, and from the western intersection with Chapman Landing Road to Matthews Road just east of the MD 227 intersection at Bryans Road. No portion of Indian Head Highway was constructed between Bryans Road and Henson Creek by 1944. A section of the highway was built between MD 224 at Kerby Hill Road south of Oxon Hill and MD 224 north of Oxon Hill in 1945. All of Indian Head Highway from Indian Head to Washington was complete by 1946. MD 210 was assigned to the Indian Head–Bryans Road portion of Indian Head Highway by 1949. The designation was applied to the remainder of the highway from Charles County to the District of Columbia in 1956. In 1955, the Maryland State Roads Commission and the Bureau of Public Roads, the predecessor to the Federal Highway Administration, signed an agreement to transfer ownership of the highway from the federal government to the state roads commission. That same year, the Livingston Road portion of MD 224 from Mason Springs to Washington was transferred to county maintenance.
  The first segment of MD 210 to be expanded to a divided highway was from the District of Columbia boundary south to Livingston Road in Forest Heights, which was expanded to a divided highway by 1950. The highway was expanded to a divided highway from Livingston Road south to MD 414 in Oxon Hill in 1963, the year MD 210's interchange with the Capital Beltway was completed. This junction was originally a full cloverleaf interchange; the ramp from the northbound Beltway for southbound MD 210 and from southbound MD 210 to the northbound Beltway l
caption: MD 210 southbound in Glassmanor
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