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Route 54 (Maryland–Delaware)

Wikipedia article covering multiple highways in Maryland and Delaware

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ798755 ↗
Source-derived summary

Maryland Route 54 (MD 54) and Delaware Route 54 (DE 54) are adjoining state highways in the U.S. states of Maryland and Delaware. Route 54 runs 41.84 mi (67.33 km) from MD 313 in Mardela Springs, Maryland, east to DE 1 in Fenwick Island, Delaware. In addition to two segments in which the highway is completely in Delaware and two segments in which the highway is completely in Maryland, Route 54 follows the Delaware/Maryland state line between the twin towns of Delmar, Maryland, and Delmar, Delaware, and the highway's intersection with MD 353 and DE 26. One section of the state line portion of Route 54 is maintained by the Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT) while three sections of the highway that follow the state line are maintained by the Maryland State Highway Administration (MDSHA).

Route 54 was first numbered in two segments in Wicomico County, Maryland, in the late 1930s. MD 467 was assigned to the segment around Mardela Springs while MD 455 was assigned to the state line road near Delmar. The Delaware portions of the highway remained unnumbered until the late 1960s, when DelDOT briefly assigned DE 32 to the highway along the southern edge of Sussex County before designating it DE 54. The Maryland State Roads Commission (now MDSHA) immediately reciprocated by designating its portions MD 54. Route 54 east of Selbyville has become an important route for seasonal beach traffic headed to and from Fenwick Island and Ocean City, with suburban development lining the road between DE 20 and the eastern terminus. DelDOT has signed DE 54 Alternate (DE 54 Alt.) as an alternate route to the beaches.

Editorial summary

“Route 54 (Maryland–Delaware)” enters the record as wikipedia article covering multiple highways in Maryland and Delaware. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Route, Maryland and Delaware can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current 273-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Route, Maryland and Delaware.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Route 54 (Maryland–Delaware)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Route, Maryland and Delaware provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q798755. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

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.

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  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Route 54 (Maryland–Delaware)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Route 54 (Maryland–Delaware) primary sources, Route 54 (Maryland–Delaware) archive and Route research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. 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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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Route 54 (Maryland–Delaware)” 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.