Maryland Route 246
highway in Maryland
Maryland Route 246 (MD 246) is a state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. Known for most of its length as Great Mills Road, the state highway runs 3.35 miles (5.39 km) from MD 5 in Great Mills east to the entrance to Naval Air Station Patuxent River (NAS Patuxent River) just east of the highway's intersection with MD 235 in Lexington Park. In conjunction with MD 5, MD 246 connects NAS Patuxent River and the suburban area surrounding the military base with Leonardtown. The state highway was originally constructed around 1920. MD 246 extended east onto land now occupied by NAS Patuxent River to serve a ferry from St. Mary's County to the southern end of Calvert County. The ferry was discontinued and the state highway's eastern terminus was rolled back to MD 235 when NAS Patuxent River was constructed during World War II; the remainder of MD 246 was upgraded as a military access project. MD 246 was expanded to a multi-lane highway in the 1990s.
Route description
MD 246 begins as Great Mills Road at an intersection with MD 5 (Point Lookout Road) in Great Mills. The state highway intersects its old alignment, which is named Old Great Mills Road and designated MD 5A, before curving northeast as a five-lane road with a center left-turn lane.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Maryland Route 246” as highway in Maryland. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as highway in Maryland. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Oct 10, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2480262. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1920.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
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Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Maryland Route 246”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Maryland Route 246 primary sources, Maryland Route 246 archive and Maryland research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Maryland Route 246” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.