PA 903 begins at an intersection with US 209 in the borough of Jim Thorpe in Carbon County, heading northeast on two-lane undivided North Street. The road immediately comes to a bridge over the Reading Blue Mountain and Northern Railroad's Lehigh Division line, the Lehigh River, and Norfolk Southern's Lehigh Line. After this bridge, the route heads into residential areas. PA 903 continues past more homes with some businesses before turning east into forested areas as an unnamed road. The road heads into Penn Forest Township, running northeast through more forests with some residences and agricultural clearings. The route heads through forested areas with some wooded residential subdivisions, running through Christmans and reaching an E-ZPass-only interchange with I-476. PA 903 heads through more dense forests, crossing through a portion of Hickory Run State Park before passing to the west of the residential development of Towamensing Trails. The road crosses into Kidder Township and intersects PA 534. The route heads north at this point and passes through a mix of woods and fields with some development before continuing back into dense forests and turning northeast near the Big Boulderski resort and Big Boulder Lake to the south of Lake Harmony. PA 903 enters Tunkhannock Township in Monroe County and continues to its northern terminus at PA 115.
History
When Pennsylvania first designated legislative routes with the Sproul Road Bill in 1911, the present-day alignment of PA 903 was not given a legislative route number. PA 903 was designated in 1928 to run from US 209/US 309 in Mauch Chunk northeast to an unimproved connecting road south of Blakeslee. At this time, all the route was unpaved except for a small portion to the northeast of Mauch Chunk. By 1930, the route was paved southwest to East Mauch Chunk while the state highway was under construction northeast to Christmans. The entire length of PA 903 was paved during the 1930s, at which point PA 115 was designated along the intersecting road at the northern terminus. In 1990, plans were made to build an interchange with the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Carbon County. A bill authorizing construction of this interchange was signed into law by Governor Robert P. Casey in July of that year. The proposal for this interchange were cancelled by the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission in 1995. In 2006, plans for the interchange between I-476 and PA 903 were resurrected, with the proposed interchange to be all-electronic, in that it will only accept E-ZPass. Construction on the $23 million interchange began in the middle of 2008. The interchange opened to traffic on June 30, 2015.
