was paved by 1923; a new reinforced concrete girder bridge was completed at the site in 1925. Other major structures along the route included a steel and concrete girder bridge across the Popes Creek Subdivision near Bowie in 1926 and reinforced concrete girder bridges across the North River and the South River completed in 1925. The fully concrete Defense Highway was finished in December 1926. Improvements When the U.S. Highway System was established in 1926, US 50 was placed on all of Defense Highway and West Street into Annapolis. The U.S. Highway continued from Church Circle along East Street and King George Street to its national eastern terminus at the Annapolis terminal of the Annapolis–Claiborne ferry across the Chesapeake Bay. When MDSRC first assigned state route numbers in 1927, MD 2 followed the present course of MD 450 from Solomons Island Road (now MD 393) to the north end of the Severn River Bridge, where the state highway continued along the Baltimore–Annapolis Boulevard. Improvements to the highways began immediately after they were numbered. The portion of MD 2 through the Naval Academy reservation was widened to with a pair of concrete shoulders in 1927. The entire length of Defense Highway was widened from to in 1930. US 50's bridges across the Pennsylvania Railroad (now Amtrak's Northeast Corridor) at Lanham and the WB&A at Buena Vista were started in 1930. By 1934, the MDSRC recommended MD 2 from Annapolis to Arnold be widened to . US 50 was proposed to be widened from from US 1 (now US 1 Alternate) at the Peace Cross in Bladensburg east to MD 564 in Lanham and from MD 387 in Annapolis west to MD 178 in Parole, and to from Lanham to Parole. The first efforts for the mass widening of these highways came in 1938. That year, US 50 was widened to immediately to the east of the Peace Cross intersection in Bladensburg. In addition, the present alignment of MD 450 from the Severn River north to Arnold was completed as the southernmost portion of Governor Ritchie Highway. This segment of the new highway was initially completed as a two-lane highway, the present southbound lanes. The northbound lanes of the new MD 2 were completed from Annapolis to Arnold in 1940. The Peace Cross intersection was channelized and US 50 was expanded to a width of from Bladensburg to Lanham between 1940 and