Many of these projects have already been completed. Out-
standing among them is the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, cross-
ing four miles of water and allowing clearance for craft
to a height of 187 feet. It was completed July 30, 1952, at a
cost of $45,000,000 and is the largest continuous over-water
steel structure in the world. Another remarkable engineer-
ing feat, the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel, was opened to traffic
at midnight November 29, 1957. Built at a cost of $130,000,-
000, it is 6,300 feet long and has in all, sixteen miles of
approach expressways that enable the motorist to speed
rapidly through one of the most highly congested areas
of Baltimore.

The Baltimore-Washington Expressway opened early in
1954. The Blue Star Highway, extending from the Chesa-
peake Bay Bridge to the Delaware line, was completed in
1956. The Washington National Pike, one of the most beau-
tiful highways in the country, has been finished between
Bethesda and Frederick. Motorists may now travel between
Annapolis and Washington on the John Hanson Highway,
while segments of the Baltimore Beltway and the Capital
Beltway are already in use.

Spurred by a series of shocking revelations published in
one of Baltimore's leading newspapers in 1949, the General
Assembly established the Department of Mental Hygiene
and gave it full supervision over all matters pertaining to
the custody, care and treatment of persons of unsound mind.
Since then the State has spent millions of dollars erecting
new buildings and improving existing facilities. More im-
portant, there has been a change in concept which regards
such institutions as treatment centers rather than as deten-
tion areas. Patuxent Institution, an experiment in the use
of indeterminate sentences in the treatment of defective
delinquents, began operating in 1955. The Clifton T. Perkins
State Hospital, a 300-bed facility, costing nearly three mil-
lion dollars, began operating in 196O. It inaugurated in
Maryland a program of psychiatric therapies combined with
rehabilitative procedures for all adult male patients who
require maximum security.

At Rosewood Training School, the Esther Loring Rich-
ards Children's Center opened in 1958 and the Jacob E.
Finesinger Building opened in 1961 to provide psychiatric
treatment for children with serious emotional, psychiatric
and neurotic illnesses as distinct from those who are men-
tally retarded.

Other medical facilities have also been constructed.
Three chronic disease hospitals have been opened: Deer's
Head State Hospital in Wicomico County (1950), Monte-