Portal:Maryland roads/Selected article/May 2015

Maryland Route 404 (MD 404) is a major highway on Maryland's Eastern Shore in the United States. It runs 24.61 mi from MD 662 in Wye Mills on the border of Queen Anne's and Talbot counties, southeast to the Delaware state line in Caroline County, where the road continues as Delaware Route 404 (DE 404). The Maryland and Delaware state highways together cross the width of the Delmarva Peninsula and serve to connect the cities west of the Chesapeake Bay by way of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and U.S. Route 50 (US 50) with the Delaware Beaches. Along the way, MD 404 passes through mostly farmland and woodland as well as the towns of Queen Anne, Hillsboro, and Denton. The road is a two-lane undivided highway for most of its length with the exception of the bypass around Denton and a section near Hillsboro, which is a four-lane divided highway. MD 404 was designated by 1933 to run from Matapeake (where the Annapolis-Matapeake ferry across the Chesapeake Bay connected the route to Annapolis), east along present-day MD 8, US 50, and MD 662 to Wye Mills, where it followed its current routing to the Delaware border. By 1946, the route’s western terminus was moved to MD 2 north of Annapolis, where it headed east across the Chesapeake Bay on the Sandy Point-Matapeake ferry. The western terminus was cut back to Wye Mills in 1949, having been replaced with US 50 west of there. The route was realigned to bypass Queen Anne and Hillsboro in 1960 and Denton in 1987. MD 404 is being widened into a four-lane divided highway to reduce the accident rate along the road. (more...)

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