Washington Highways

So, I’ve come to the end of Washington. I never actually believed I would finish it when I started, but there we go. Forever more I will be able to say I have driven every mile of state highway in Washington. That’s an accomplishment.

Some say it is sort of strange that I devoted so much time, money, and energy to doing this, but I can tell you that I finished the highway system as enthusiastically as I started it. Never once from the beginning did I say “This is stupid…why I am I doing this?” I love being behind the wheel of a car, and I loved every second of the adventure. I saw parts of the state nobody really knows anything about. How many people from Tacoma have really been to Kettle Falls? How many have looked at the DOT maintenance yard in Anatone?

I would wager that among people who don’t work for the department of transportation there couldn’t be many more than 10 or 20 people who have actually driven every mile of state highway in Washington. And I’m the only one who has logged it thoroughly on the internet (Google Street View might actually be catching up, but they’re a machine and don’t count). And I’m proud of that.

I have a fascination for roads and driving and exploring random (sometimes almost indistinguishable) human settlements unparalleled by a giant amount of the population. The subtle differences between a town like Dayton and a town like Colfax intrigue me. Unfortunately as a busy college student I don’t have the time or energy to really go into any of that in depth in a written format. This site caters to roadgeeks and people interested in roads. One day I might be able to expand upon it, but this is not that time. For me the only natural thing to do is go out and explore roads and see the country as best I can.

Washington is one of the most diverse states in the country, and I’m thrilled to be able to say I’ve seen the whole thing. The most frequent question I get is “What is your favorite highway?” or something to that effect, so without further ado, ranked 1-5:

Favorite highways:

1. SR 129- This is an epic drive from Clarkston to the Oregon state line north of Enterprise. The road heads down along the Snake River before heading up a grade, and then descends down a long, windy, beautiful descent into a small valley. It then climbs back up the mountains again and crosses into Oregon halfway through
2. SR 410- The Chinook Pass is absolutely awesome to look at. The views of Mount Rainier as one passes through the national park is unprecedented
3. SR 31- Way up in the northeast corner of Washington are beautiful forests of tamarack and evergreen trees, lots of water, majestic cliffs, and just an overall beautiful experience. One day I want to drive the whole International Selkirk loop, but that segment was completely beautiful
4. SR 20- What a beautiful road. Besides being Washington’s longest state route, it passes through diverse and beautiful terrain. Starting on the Olympic Peninsula, then over a ferry and up past Whidbey Island, over Deception Pass with beautiful water views. The road then passes over the North Cascades in some of the best non-Rainier mountain views in the state. It spends a few miles in the flat but scenic Okanogan Valley before passing over Wauconda Pass and into Kettle Falls and the Columbia River, before heading east and south to Newport through beautiful forests
5. SR 504- Yes, this is the route to Mount Saint Helens. And it is beautiful, with impressive views of the mountain and the slow recovery of the forests around it after the eruption

Favorite primary cross-state route

1. US 12- US 12 is great. It passes over all kinds of terrain, from the forests of western Washington to the beautiful mountains of White Pass to the agrarian areas of southeastern Washington before passing through the southern part of the Palouse and the Snake River area. The road varies from 2 lane to 4 lane to interstate to 4 lane to 2 lane, providing the most diverse driving experience possible

Least favorite primary cross-state route

1. I-5- I hate I-5. Lots of traffic, nothing particularly interesting to look at outside of the Seattle skyline if you’re already bored of staring at trees, generally passive drivers with no desire to get anywhere. I-5 represents everything wrong with Western Washington. If I never had to get on I-5 again I wouldn’t complain.

I would be happy to give you my 5 least favorite routes but I spent half an hour looking at the map again today and besides I-5 I don’t really dislike any of them. Every single other route has some redeeming quality that made it interesting. Some routes are more boring than others but there aren’t really any routes I look at and say “egh I do NOT want to touch that thing again”

Perhaps the happiest part about this is that I had so much fun driving every mile of state highway in Washington that I’m continuing onto another state. I’ve been saying Oregon! Oregon! Oregon! for a while now as it is easily accessible from Washington. Unfortunately, Oregon is becoming a secondary priority. For my next semester in college I am transferring to the beautiful University of Wyoming…which means Laramie Wyoming. I’ll be majoring in Geography because I figure if this (plus mapping) is the kind of stuff I like to dedicate my time thinking about I might as well see how I can go about getting paid to think about it or something similar (I’m not sure what the pecuniary value of having pictures of a bunch of reassurance shields is but I’m guessing it’s not that much).

I will be there for at least a couple years, giving me plenty of time to drive every mile of state highway in Wyoming (Wyoming has an insane number of route numbers but they’re all concurrent). Depending on whether or not I spend my summers in Idaho, I still might make significant progress on Oregon. Any updates to the state of Oregon will be posted both there and at Wyomingroutes.org. I will not be posting again to the front page of this site. Idaho and British Columbia content will continue to be hosted here until they get their own sites (hint: British Columbia probably won’t ever get its own site). I expect I’ll generate a good deal of Colorado content as well, certainly in the Boulder/Fort Collins/northern Denver area.

I’m looking forward to the new experience of another state, so join me at Wyomingroutes.org.

It’s been a fun ride, and I thank my loyal readers, the souls that have offered invaluable information as commentors, the countless numbers of roadgeek websites that are crammed full of useful information, and everyone else who has made this possible. I had a lot of fun doing it and I hope this website can be of some use to somebody. Enjoy!

All photos on this site were taken between February 2007 and December 2008.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to shoot me an email at davidjcorcoran (at) gmail!com (replace (at) with @ and ! with .). If you feel like you have or know of a website that provides useful information on Washington’s highways, shoot me an email as well and I’ll add you to the sidebar.

Late Edit (12/20/08): The issue I hadn’t decided to address came up quicker then I thought. It looks like SR 397 is up for extension from Piert Rd to I-82. The question now is: “Do I drive it?” I’m not guaranteeing I’ll get every state highway modification ever in the future, but I imagine I’ll be heading through the Tri-Cities at some point in the next year so I can definitely do that. Any announcements relating to that will be posted on Wyomingroutes.org

I finally uploaded all highway pages, with bonus updates to the SR 16 section as well. New photos for SR 16 from SR 160 to I-5 as the old ones sucked and also predated the toll bridge. I also put up the SR 302 Spur, a spur I previously neglected but it is important enough to warrant its own page.

I’ll be doing some final changes to the template, finishing the error and state line pages, and writing a final goodbye post plus a major announcement at some point in the next 24 hours.

I’ve driven every mile of state highway in Washington as of a week ago. I’m working on getting all the photos uploaded (something which should happen this week) and then a gigantic final post, and then that’ll be that as I move on to my next state.

After all is said and done, things aren’t quite what I planned. I still have left to finish

• US-2 (US-395 to SR 41)
• SR 160 (Ferry)
• SR 206
• SR 231
• SR 291
• SR 292
• SR 304 (Ferry)

I have to go to Spokane in a couple weeks for business, and I’ll take care of all of the non-ferry stuff then. Ferry stuff I’ll try to do in the coming week. I’ll also be uploading photos of the drive I just got back from, but I’ve got lots of school and tests and stuff that I suppose I should apply myself to so it may be a while before everything is uploaded.

So new tentative date for finishing the highways is November 2, with all photos and site completion hopefully within a week of that.

Soon to be one more drive. Due to shortened service on the Seattle-Bremerton (SR 304) ferry, I’ve been unable to take the ferry drive on a Wednesday and have had to postpone it until Sunday. This Sunday is the first Sunday I’ll have had available so I’ll head up Seattle way and clinch the following

• SR 160
• SR 304
• SR 305
• SR 519

as well as King and Kitsap counties and all of Western Washington.

I’m still on track for the final drive in a couple weeks, where northeastern Washington will be completed and I’ll be done with Washington’s State Route system.

In the coming days I’m working on finalizing this site as once I finish I shouldn’t have any reason to log back in except to upload Idaho or British Columbia highway photos (as they are already based here, any other new states will go to Oregon Routes). I’ll be re-writing the about section and I’m working on a final closing post as I complete Washington.

It’s a bittersweet situation.

So last weekend I went ahead and drove over the North Cascades Highway (which is absolutely beautiful I might add) and so clinched SRs 530, 542, and made progress on that section of SR 20.

This puts me only TWO drives away from completing the entire state highway system. One is the ferry “drive” I hope to complete next week where I’ll clinch my last miles of pavement in Western Washington (SR 519) and the three ferry routes I have not finished (SRs 160, 304, 305). I won’t be clinching SR 339 nor do I have any plans to as control of that route has been turned over to the county and so I expect the legislative route to be decommissioned soon (not to mention it is impossible to clinch).

The second drive is a three day adventure into the northeastern corner of Washington. I’ll make Colville my home base and clinch everything I have not already done. I’m planning on doing that the weekend of October 21.

Then I’ll be done.

I’m slowly but surely uploading all these photos over the last month- I still have a considerable backlog and I keep taking more drives which does not make things easier. I think I’m over halfway done now so they should all be coming up eventually. I move in descending order as dictated by my FTP server (e.g. 542, 530, 243, 20, 122, 12)  without regard to when I drove the highway, so I still have to put up pictures for the following (in order)

SR 542, SR 530, SR 20, SR 172, SR 17, SR 165, SR 122, US-12, and then Oregon US-730, OR 207, and then Idaho SH 99, SH 66, SH 60, SH 58, US-12, SH 8, SH 3

and then I’ll be caught up (plus probably the ferry drive photos)

The drive to St. Helens is beautiful. I did note that none of the trees appear to be more than 30 years old, however, which seems odd to me. I wonder if it has something to do with logging?

The entrance to Morton on EB US 12 is really quaint as well- I enjoyed it, but I still like the SR 7 SB entrance with the giant mountain in front of the town better

SR 508 is underrated as a Morton to I-5 thoroughfare by Google Maps. Not a lot of commercial traffic save for some logging trucks, speed limit 55 for more than half of it, 50 for the other half (but you can speed)

Anyway, this weekend I head to Idaho and back:

Clinching

• US-2
• SR 17
• SR 27
• SR 41
• SR 172
• SR 203
• SR 207
• SR 274
• SR 278
• Idaho 41
• Idaho 58
• Idaho 60

While making progress on SR 20 from SR 211 to US-2 as well as US-395 from I-90 to US-2.

I’ll clinch Whitman County

If I have time while I’m there (maybe on Monday) I want to go ahead and clinch US-2, drive SR 20 from SR 211 to US-2 and also clinch SRs 41, 206 and Idaho 41, but there’s like a 30% chance of this actually happening.

With more information on the situation I’ll be able to get the US-2 box and clinch that- SR 206 if I have time. If not I have to head down that stretch of road again when I clinch SRs 20 and 211, but US-2 is going to be done.

It will be nice to get my computer back as I am accumulating a large backlog of photos

My computer is back. I’m getting started on uploading and posting the backlog tonight.

So in the interest of getting things done I am not only going to get most of US-2 this weekend but tomorrow I will (finally) be clinching

• US-12
• SR 122
• SR 504
• SR 506
• SR 508

Which means I’ll also finish Lewis, Cowlitz, and Skamania counties.

Then Saturday I’ll take the drive previously mentioned as planned

Unfortunately I took a completely different drive then I said I was going to. I decided to get wasted last night instead and so today drove all of SR 165 and clinched Pierce County. That was a neat drive. I love dirt roads.

I have now clinched every mile of unpaved state highway in the state of Washington.

On Saturday I’m heading to Coeur d’Alene and back. I’ll clinch

• SR 17 (finally)
• SR 27 (I promise I actually will this time)
• SR 172
• SR 203
• SR 207
• SR 274
• SR 278
• Idaho 58
• Idaho 60

and make progress on

• US-2 (SR 203 to I-90, most of the state)

I do need to do that SR 20/530 drive soonish though before the days get too short or they close the pass.

Hopefully I’ll get my computer back soon so I can upload pictures.

My computer is in the shop so I can’t upload pictures. That said it is drive season…so I’m going to take another drive and hopefully be able to get all the pictures from the really long drive and this drive up within a week.

Anyway, this is a long drive of doubling back. I’ll take I-5 up to Bellingham, rephotographing what isn’t very good right now (the photos now are from a rainy day), and finally clinch SR 542. I’ll pull a u-turn, drive all the way back to I-5, head south, and drive SR 20 east over the North Cascades to Twisp and the SR 153 junction. I will then turn around, head over the passes again, and clinch SR 530 before getting back to the interstate and going home.

It’s not a lot of pages but it is a lot of mileage of new highway, and this is the only practical way to get it. I’ll clinch Skagit and Whatcom counties on this drive.

Next week I’m heading over to Coeur d’Alene, and I’ll get most of US 2 and all associated nearby roads I haven’t clinched then