Maryland Route 273

Maryland Route 273 (MD 273) is a state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. Known for most of its length as Telegraph Road, the state highway runs 16.58 miles (26.68 km) from U.S. Route 1 (US 1) near Harrisville east to the Delaware state line near Appleton, where the highway continues east as Delaware Route 273 (DE 273). MD 273 is the main east–west highway of northern Cecil County, connecting Conowingo (via US 1), Port Deposit (via MD 276, and Rising Sun with Newark, Delaware, via the communities of Calvert and Fair Hill, where the highway intersects MD 272 and MD 213, respectively. The state highway also provides access to Fair Hill Training Center. MD 273 contains a section of MD 274 Truck between MD 274 in Rising Sun and MD 272 in Calvert.

MD 273 west of Fair Hill was constructed as one of the original state roads, with the portion west of the intersection of Sylmar Road east of Rising Sun constructed as part of US 1 in the 1910s. The first sections of MD 273 proper were paved in the early 1910s west of Calvert. The final section of the state highway between Fair Hill and Appleton was completed around 1930. MD 273 was also assigned to the original state road between the Susquehanna River and Octoraro Creek when US 1 was moved to a new alignment serving Conowingo Dam in the late 1920s; that segment was returned to county maintenance in the late 1950s. MD 273 was extended west to its present western terminus when the Rising Sun Bypass was completed in 1957.