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Seattle -Tacoma highway opens on October i8, 1928.
By Phil Dougherty
Posted 3/30/2021
HistoryLink.org Essay 21209
Seattle -Tacoma highway route, The Seattle Times,
March 27, 1927
Seattle -Tacoma interurban streetcar, near Kent, ca.
1909
Courtesy MOHAI (2002.3.1435)
On October 18, 1928, a new highway connecting Seattle and
Tacoma opens. The 24 -mile road runs southeast out of Seattle along
East Marginal Way and across the new Duwamish River Bridge,
then travels south through Riverton and past Angle Lake before
turning west at Milton and proceeding to Tacoma. The new
highway is a marked improvement over the two existing roads
commonly used in the 1920s to travel between the two cities. It
becomes part of the Pacific Highway, later U.S. Route 99, which
runs from Vancouver, British Columbia to San Diego, California,
and will serve as the main West Coast transportation artery before it
is surpassed by Interstate 5 in the 1960s.
Local Roads
In the earliest years of the twentieth century a network of local
roads, mostly unpaved, connected Seattle and
Tacoma. III ntcruuurlhan service between the two cities, which began in
1902, was the best way to get between them; the trip took either an
hour and 40 minutes (with multiple stops) or an hour and 10
minutes on the limited. This worked well for a time, until the
automobile began to make both the horse and the
interurban III -is Illcic
An early segment of the Pacific Highway, usually referred to locally
as the West Valley Road, was completed between Seattle and
Tacoma by late 1915. However, taking it wasn't any faster than
taking the limited. By the mid -1920s, the explosive growth of the
automobile was mandating the construction of better roads. A new
highway between Seattle and Tacoma had been under consideration
for several years, and after some talk of placing it slightly farther
east, the final route was chosen by the state highway department in
1924. Grading for the new road began later that year and was
completed by the spring of 1927.
The 1927 Legislature appropriated funds to pave a 20 -foot -wide
concrete lane from Seattle to the newly completed IPuyallllllulp IRliiveur
rliimge (now [2021] the Puyallup Avenue Bridge) at the edge of
Tacoma, and the appropriation included funding for a new bridge
for the highway across the Duwamish River just west of the extant
bridge on East Marginal Way. (The legislature also increased the
state highway speed limit from 30 to 40 miles per hour, which
generated as much excitement as the announcement of the new
highway.) A second 20 -foot -wide lane was planned to be built next
to the first after it was completed, and the entire project was priced
at $3,065,000 ($46 million in 2021 dollars).
The West Valley Road and the High Line
In 1927, the southbound West Valley Road followed a 33.4 -mile
route out of Seattle along East Marginal Way to today's Interurban
Boulevard, then through Tukwila and south on the West Valley
Road to Sumner before pivoting west to Tacoma. Though this was
considered the primary roadway between the two cities, a second
route had gained a substantial following by the early 1920s, so
much so that for a time there was talk of making it the main route.
Known as the High Line, this way was much shorter at 24 miles.
But it was a more difficult journey, with more hills and curves than
.11.1,10,1111 1111111111111.11';01,
Automobile, Pacific Highway, ca. 1916
Courtesy UW Special Collections (UW26690z)
Resurfacing Seattle -Tacoma highway, September
1944
Courtesy MOHAI (PI25324)
/i%
Seattle -Tacoma highway crossing Duwamish River,
Seattle, looking southwest, 1961
Courtesy Washington State Historical Society
(1996.122.25.10)
the West Valley Road. Further, only part of the High Line was
paved, and some of that pavement was bricks.
In 1927, the southbound High Line left Seattle and crossed the
Duwamish River on the 14th Avenue Bridge at South Park before
connecting with what is now known as the III )es M Imes Mem nail°
IIWove. During the early 1920s, 1,432 American elm trees were
planted along the nearly 10 -mile drive from the Seattle city limits to
the Kent -Des Moines Highway as a living memorial to the state's
World War I dead, and this stretch of roadway was later renamed
accordingly. The memorial drive ended in Des Moines, and from
there the final 13 miles to Tacoma was gravel. The road followed
today's Marine View Drive S through Redondo and edged west on
Dash Point Road before turning south again for a dramatic ending
on the approach to Tacoma. Here the High Line dropped down the
big hill at Julia's Gulch, a dangerous, winding traverse, but with
striking views of the Tacoma Flats below.
New and Improved
Grading had first been completed on the southern end of the new
highway and the work had had more time to settle, so this part of
the road, between Redondo and Tacoma, was paved first. The work
was largely completed by November 1927, and the southern section
of the highway opened to traffic in December. Work on the northern
section was completed in October 1928, and the highway was
dedicated by an entourage of Seattle and Tacoma officials on the
afternoon of October 18. They first met at the northern intersection
of the highway and the West Valley Road, a mile or so south of
Boeing Field, to cut the ceremonial ribbon formally opening the
new route, then caravanned to Angle Lake for dedicatory speeches.
The highway helped hasten the end of the interurban between
Seattle and Tacoma, which shut down at the end of 1928. Its
adjacent concrete lane opened to traffic in the early 1930s, making
it a four -lane highway and making it easier for motorists to enjoy
that new 40 -mile -per -hour speed limit.
This essay made possible by:
Seattle Office of Arts & Culture
King County
Sources:
"Ceremonies Thursday on New Highway," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, October 14, 1928, p. 17; "One Side of New Highway to Tacoma to be Paved," The
Seattle Daily Times, March 27, 1927, p. 14; "New Tacoma Highway Unit Pavement Laid," Ibid., November 17, 1927, p. 16; CPI Inflation Calculator,
website accessed March 9, 2021 (https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm); "The Historic Pacific Highway in Washington: Tacoma to Seattle,"
website accessed March 10, 2021 (http://www.pacific-hwy.net/tacoma.htm); 'Remembrance Trees," SoCoCulture website accessed March 10, 2021
(http://sococulture.org/remembrance-trees/).
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