Every summer, the signs connecting Ocean City, Maryland, and Sacramento, California, spark curiosity online as travelers discover the two cities are permanently linked by a pair of matching highway markers spanning 3,073 miles.
Route 50, stretching from West Sacramento to Maryland’s Ocean City, carries more than just travelers. It also carries one of the country’s most unique pieces of highway history.
Sometime between the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ocean City officials installed a sign marking the eastern terminus of US 50, proudly displaying the distance to Sacramento (3,073 miles) as a nod to the highway’s distant beginning on the West Coast.
While California had then Caltrans highway maintenance head John R. Cropper Jr. behind its sign, the original Maryland sign was the brainchild of an often-overlooked local figure, Ed Buck, a Maryland State Highway Administration engineer in the late 1970s.
It’s said, according to Buck’s son David Buck, who later became a spokesperson for the Maryland State Highway Administration, his father installed the sign simply because he was in charge and thought it would be a fun, distinctive marker, never imagining it would inspire a cross-country tradition.
Inspired by a visit to Ocean City and its unique sign, Cropper later convinced Caltrans to install a reciprocal sign in Sacramento. Despite some initial resistance from colleagues who questioned whether the sign was necessary, motorists on US 50 East entering California’s capital now see “Ocean City, Maryland – 3,073 Miles,” creating one of the nation’s most recognizable highway connections.
Maintaining the two signs, however, has taken very different paths. The Sacramento sign was stolen twice, once in 1999 and again in 2001. After the second theft, Caltrans replaced it with a much larger, heavier multi-destination sign designed to make future thefts far more difficult. The replacement initially contained a typo, listing the distance as 3,037 miles instead of the correct 3,073 miles, an error that was later corrected.
Ocean City’s sign, on the other hand, has largely avoided that problem thanks to its location. Rather than being mounted along the roadside, it hangs high above Route 50 on a massive overhead gantry at the entrance to Ocean City, suspended over multiple lanes of heavy traffic crossing the Harry W. Kelley Memorial Bridge. Its placement makes it virtually impossible to steal without specialized equipment, extensive road closures, and likely a significant police presence.
A version of this article was published in March 2025. Photos courtesy of Google Maps and the Maryland State Highway Administration. Information courtesy of FOX40, CapRadio, and historical accounts from the Maryland State Highway Administration.
