US Route 3

**US Route 3** is a north-south highway running from Pittsburg, New Hampshire to Cambridge, Massachusetts. It mainly serves as an alternate route for I-93. The highway also serves Lancaster, Franconia, Plymouth, Tilton, Concord, Manchester, and Nashua in New Hampshire, and Burlington and Cambridge in Massachusetts. It also indirectly serves Boston, and technically continues south to Quincy, Braintree, Kingston, Plymouth, and Cape Cod as Massachusetts Highway 3. It also serves as both a parallel highway and as the Everett Turnpike.

## Route Description

### New Hampshire

After the end of Quebec 257, US 3 begins at the northern tip of Pittsburg in the Connecticut Lakes State Forest, then continues south through the lakes. It then meets NH 145 in downtown Pittsburg, then begins paralleling the Vermont Border and Connecticut River, passing Stewartstown, Colebrook, Stratford, Northumberland, Lancaster, Whitefield, Carroll, and Franconia, then merges onto I-93 through the White Mountain National Forests, hopping off at sort times, but mostly either concurring or paralleling I-93, passing Lincoln, Woodstock, Thornton, Campton, and lastly Plymouth, where it splits off to be a spur into Laconia. US 3 begins a concurrency with NH 25 through Ashland and near Center Harbor, then splits off and turn south, passing downtown Meredith, Weirs Beach, and Glendale. In Glendale, US 3 splits into US 3 and US 3 Business, and US 3 turns into a Laconia Bypass. US 3 meets NH 11 then turns into a super-two (sometimes super-three) freeway. After passing around Laconia, it turns back into a street, still concurrent with NH 11, then meets US 3 Business. It parallels Lake Winnisquam, then passes Belmont, and meets I-93. This is where it starts paralleling I-93 directly again. US 3 passes Tilton, Franklin, Boscawen, where US 3 meets US 4, Penacook, and downtown Concord, where US 3 is Main Street. It passes by the state house and many other buildings in downtown. It meets I-393, NH 9, and US 202, before crosses the Merrimack River and acting as a eastern I-93 parallel highway. Before this, US 3 meets NH 3A in Concord, which acts as a direct parallel highway. US 3 passes through Suncook and Hooksett, then meets I-93 again and continues through downtown Manchester as Hooksett Road, Webster Street, Elm Street, and Queen City Avenue, then US 3 parallels I-293 near Bedford. It passes NH 101, then becomes a parallel of the Everett Turnpike, passing Manchester Airport, Merrimack, and Nashua. Right before Downtown Nashua, US 3 joins the Everett Turnpike to become a freeway around Nashua. It then meets the Circumferential Highway and enters Massachusetts.

### Massachusetts

In Massachusetts, US 3 is a freeway for most of the route. US 3 passes Tyngsborough, Lowell (I-495), Billerica, Burlington, where it holds a short wrong-way concurrency with I-95, then US 3 turns into a street, and passes Woburn, Winchester, and Arlington, then meets the end of MA 2 and passes through Cambridge, passing Harvard and nearly passing MIT, paralleling the Charles River. US 3 then ends at a junction with MA 2A, when it then turns into MA 3

## Parallel Routes

 Interstate 93
 Interstate 90, US Route 20