Maryland Route 543
highway in Maryland
Maryland Route 543 (MD 543) is a state highway in the U.S. state of Maryland. The state highway runs 19.08 miles (30.71 km) from U.S. Route 40 (US 40) in Riverside north to MD 165 in Pylesville. MD 543 is a north–south highway through central Harford County that connects the communities of Creswell, Fountain Green, Hickory, and Ady with the county's four main east–west highways: US 40, Interstate 95 (I-95), MD 22, and US 1. MD 543 was originally constructed in the early 1930s from Hickory to north of Ady, where the highway followed part of what is now MD 646. The state highway swapped routes with MD 646 to end in Pylesville by 1946. MD 543 was extended south in three steps to MD 7 in the 1950s. The state highway was rerouted at its southern end when I-95 was constructed in the early 1960s and again when the highway's interchange with the Interstate was built in the early 1990s. MD 543 was extended south through Riverside to US 40 in the mid 1990s.
Route description
MD 543 begins at an intersection with US 40 (Pulaski Highway) in an industrial area of Riverside. The state highway initially heads southeast from US 40, then curves clockwise 180 degrees toward the northwest to cross over US 40 and CSX's Philadelphia Subdivision railroad line.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Maryland Route 543” is highway in Maryland. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Maryland, Route and highway, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “highway in Maryland” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 4, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2480603. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1946.
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.
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This entry incorporates text from “Maryland Route 543” 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.