Originally, there had been plans to upgrade it all from Selbyville to Ellendale, but freeway bypasses of Milford and Millsboro were cancelled or altered due to community opposition.
US 113 has a grade crossing with the Snow Hill Line of the Maryland and Delaware Railroad and turns northeast again as the highway receives the other end of US 113 Business.
[11][20] US 113 crosses Poplartown Branch of Beaverdam Creek, passes the historic Italianate-style plantation home Merry Sherwood, and enters the town of Berlin at its southern junction with MD 818 (Main Street).
North of the interchange, within which the highways cross Kitts Branch, US 113 meets the northern end of MD 818 as it begins to closely parallel the Snow Hill Line.
The U.S. Highway heads north parallel to the Maryland and Delaware Railroad to the town of Frankford, which was founded around a country store and the site of the Gothic Revival home of Captain Ebe Chandler.
[26][33] The highway crosses Pepper Creek and intersects DE 26 (Clayton Street/Nine Foot Road), which heads east to Bethany Beach, while it passes through the western fringe of the town.
[26] The highway has a grade crossing of the Delmarva Central Railroad's Indian River Subdivision track and a junction with DE 14 (Milford Harrington Highway/Northwest Front Street).
[27][44][45][46] The route intersected Court Street (named Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard since 2013[47])/South Little Creek Road, with Court Street heading west to the Dover Green Historic District and Delaware Legislative Hall, before reaching its northern terminus at a Y intersection with US 13 and the northern end of US 113 Alternate (DuPont Highway).
[27][28][48] The original highway along much of the US 113 corridor was a post road established in the late 18th century that connected Horn Town on the Eastern Shore of Virginia with Snow Hill, Berlin, Selbyville, Georgetown, Milford, and Dover, ultimately leading to Wilmington and Philadelphia.
Within two years, the agency determined that road building was an area that required extensive study and promotion, so the agency requested and received authorization from the Maryland General Assembly to create a Highway Division to study the state of highways in Maryland and propose engineering and legislative solutions to the state's transportation problems.
[54] Due to a lack of satisfactory contractor bids, the Maryland SRC contracted Worcester County forces to construct the state road between Snow Hill and Berlin.
Inspired by the great boulevards of Europe and cognizant of the need for a main north–south highway as the backbone of a well-laid-out system of roads in Delaware, DuPont envisioned a 200-foot (61 m) right-of-way that contained a 40-foot-wide (12 m) high-speed automobile highway flanked by dual trolley tracks, roadways for heavy vehicle traffic, unpaved roadways for horses above buried utility lines, and sidewalks at the outer edge of the right-of-way.
[63] The Delaware General Assembly passed the Boulevard Corporation Act of 1911, which authorized the formation of Coleman DuPont Road, Inc., to acquire land and construct a highway the length of the state.
[64] By 1912, construction was interrupted by litigation challenging both the constitutionality of the law establishing the road building corporation and the need for DuPont to acquire such a large right-of-way.
After his death in 1930, DuPont was recognized for foreseeing that traffic on highways would approach the speed and volume of railroads and planning with provisions for future needs.
[71] South of Milford, the DuPont Highway was constructed entirely on new alignment except from Bedford Street north of Georgetown to Old State Road at Redden.
No longer fully reliant on the railroads to transport their goods, farmers in Sussex and Kent counties could market their fruits, vegetables, and broiler chickens directly to consumers in the north.
[81] Between December 1931 and the end of 1933, DSHD constructed a causeway across 3,150 feet (960 m) of the marsh on the east bank of the river, a process that required multiple applications of fill dirt and dynamite to create a stable surface for a modern highway.
[89] As early as 1933, two years before US 13 had been completed as a four-lane divided highway from Dover to Wilmington, Delawareans petitioned DSHD to extend the divided highway south to the Maryland state line at Selbyville or Delmar (US 13), a proposition DSHD acknowledged but deferred due to lack of funding, lack of proper planning, and higher priorities elsewhere in the state.
[99][107][108] The US 113 divided highway was extended around Milford when the southbound carriageway was built from Walnut Street south to near Lincoln between 1961 and 1963; the project included a pair of bridges over the east end of Haven Lake at the Kent–Sussex county line.
[144][145] The second segment of US 113 reconstruction, from south of MD 589 to Jarvis Road, included two relocations from the old highway to reduce impacts to St. Martin's Episcopal Church and the community of Showell.
[147] In 2005, MDSHA began construction on a five-phase, long-term project to expand US 113 between Snow Hill and Berlin to a four-lane divided highway to improve safety and service in the face of increasing seasonal traffic and development.
[167][168][169] Phase 2B, which covered the 1.8 miles (2.9 km) of highway between Massey Branch just north of Newark and Goody Hill Road, began in 2009 and was complete at the end of 2011.
[178] The state has long-term plans to establish partial control of access on US 113 between Pocomoke City and the south end of the Snow Hill bypass.
[180] Once that project is complete, the only remaining stretch of US 113 in Maryland without access controls will be from Hayes Landing Road to the south end of the Berlin bypass.
[190][191] In May 2011, Sussex County legislators proposed the U.S. Highway be upgraded fully along its current alignment, with the addition of a northeast bypass of Millsboro to connect US 113 and DE 24 that could be constructed mostly through state-owned land.
US 113 Business passes near the neoclassical home Chanceford and by the Julia A. Purnell Museum, which displays the history and memorability of Snow Hill, including the namesake's needlework.
[204] US 113 Business crosses Purnell Branch, a tributary of the Pocomoke River, and leaves the town limits of Snow Hill just west of its northern terminus at US 113.
While South State Street continued north toward the Dover Green Historic District and Delaware Legislative Hall, US 113 Alternate turned northeast to run concurrently with US 13.
[48] The two highways crossed the St. Jones River and intersected Court Street (named Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard since 2013[47]), which headed west toward the state capitol and east to provide access to US 113 (Bay Road).