Maryland Route 404 - History

History

When Maryland started numbering state highways in 1927, the present-day routing of MD 404 was a state-maintained road between Queen Anne and Denton, even though the road had no assigned number then. By 1940, MD 404 was designated, with the route’s western terminus in Matapeake, where the Annapolis-Matapeake ferry across the Chesapeake Bay connected the route to Annapolis in Anne Arundel County. From Matapeake, the route ran along present day Maryland Route 8, Maryland Route 18, and Maryland Route 662 to Wye Mills, where it continued east along its current route. By 1948, the route's western terminus was moved to Maryland Route 2 in Anne Arundel County, crossing the Chesapeake Bay on the Sandy Point-Matapeake ferry, roughly where the Chesapeake Bay Bridge is now. The Chesapeake Bay Bridge was originally to be designated as part of MD 404. However, it was decided for US 50 to be extended onto the Eastern Shore, replacing MD 404 between Annapolis and Wye Mills. By 1960, a bypass was built for MD 404 around Queen Anne and Hillsboro with the former alignment becoming Maryland Route 404 Alternate and a portion of the route between Hillsboro and Denton was also bypassed. This former alignment of MD 404 is now known as Saathoff Road and has the unsigned Maryland Route 485 designation. In the early 1980s, a four-lane divided bypass of Denton was constructed for the route and the alignment of MD 404 through Denton became Maryland Route 404 Business. The divided portion highway of MD 404 in the Denton area was extended further in the 2000s from the south end of Denton to the Sennett Road intersection east of where MD 16 joins the route. This project received $3 million from the federal government in 2001.