Maryland Route 194 - History

History

In the 18th century, the corridor of what is now MD 194 was the Hanover–Frederick portion of the Monocacy Road, a migration route that connected Philadelphia and Winchester, Virginia via York, Frederick, Boonsboro, and Williamsport. The Frederick County portion of the highway later became the path of a pair of turnpikes. The Woodsboro and Double Pipe Creek Turnpike connected the namesake town and creek; the Woodsboro and Frederick Turnpike extended from Woodsboro south to the junction with the Liberty and Frederick Turnpike in Ceresville. The two turnpikes issuing from Ceresville were connected to Frederick by the Frederick and Woodsboro Turnpike. The Woodsboro and Frederick Turnpike was the last privately maintained toll road in Maryland when it was purchased by the Maryland State Roads Commission, the predecessor to the Maryland State Highway Administration, in 1921.

What is now MD 194 was originally designated MD 71. The roads commission resurfaced the turnpikes' macadam surface from Ceresville to Little Pipe Creek to a width of 15 feet (4.6 m) by 1926. That same year, 1 mile (1.6 km) of concrete road was constructed north from MD 32 (now MD 140) in Taneytown. In 1930, construction began to complete the concrete road that MD 71 would follow through Carroll County. The state highway was completed in five sections from a short distance north of Big Pipe Creek to the Pennsylvania state line in 1933. The Carroll County section of MD 71 was dedicated as Francis Scott Key Highway in 1931. The two sections of MD 71 were separated by a county-maintained segment of highway through Keymar. This gap in the state road system remained through at least 1949.

MD 71 received a new steel I-beam bridge over Big Pipe Creek in 1940; this bridge was replaced in 2005. The state highway was widened through Taneytown in 1948. MD 71's present steel I-beam bridge over Little Pipe Creek at the county line was started in 1953 and completed in 1954 along with 1 mile (1.6 km) of approach roads. The state highway was reconstructed and widened from the Little Pipe Creek Bridge to New Midway in 1952 and 1953. Reconstruction of the highway commenced from New Midway to Woodsboro in 1953, from Woodsboro to Ceresville in 1956, and from Taneytown to the Pennsylvania state line in 1957.

In 1956, MD 71 was involved in a three-route number change involving highways in three different areas of the state. MD 71 was reassigned to the Blue Star Memorial Highway then under construction from Queenstown to the Delaware state line; this designation lasted only three years before U.S. Route 301 was rerouted onto the highway in 1959. MD 71 was designated MD 194 to match the adjacent numbered highway in Pennsylvania. MD 194 had previously been assigned to Flower Avenue in Takoma Park; Flower Avenue was then designated MD 787.

MD 194's bypass of Walkersville was completed around 1981. The state highway's bypass of Woodsboro was under construction by 1995 and completed in 1997; Main Street through town was designated MD 194A. MD 550, which ran concurrently with MD 194 along Main Street, joined the latter route on the new bypass and on a bypass section of its own at the north end of town. In conjunction with the reconstruction of MD 26 as a divided highway from Market Street (then part of MD 355) in Frederick to Ceresville in 1997, the MD 26–MD 194 intersection was reconfigured so the primary movement through the intersection is between MD 26 to the west and MD 194 to the north; the southernmost portion of MD 194 became an extension of the MD 26 divided highway. This configuration was chosen because two-thirds of traffic passing through the intersection was between Frederick and Woodsboro.