https://www.thebaltimorebanner.com/community/transportation/baltimore-key-bridge-collapse-future-KGI3FSAVRZH6TKEHEX6SBIAS4Q/

In the mid-1960s, with the Baltimore Harbor Tunnel regularly clogged with traffic, the state highway agency recommended completing the Baltimore Beltway’s loop by connecting Sollers Point and Fort Armistead with a second, two-lane tunnel underneath the Patapsco.

The legislature in 1966 enacted a bill authorizing the new harbor tunnel, along with a second span of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Then-Gov. J. Millard Tawes said the tunnel would “tie together and make possible orderly development of highly important industrial areas in Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties.”

But, when the tunnel costs ballooned, a four-lane bridge reemerged as a cheaper alternative and the project changed course in 1971.

It was first known as the Outer Harbor Bridge, but veterans groups and historians lobbied to name it for Francis Scott Key, because it was believed Key had written a poem that would become “The Star-Spangled Banner” after watching the bombing of Fort McHenry in 1812 from within 100 yards of the bridge’s eventual footprint.