The state stopped keeping records on this road in 1969. Somebody has to.
STATION · NE 78TH ST · MP 0.75 ±
Four miles of county arterial between the Main Street interchange and the I-5/I-205 junction, carrying more than a century and a half of accumulated right-of-way. Entries below are from the record, checked twice.
A U.S. Army road cut north from Fort Vancouver toward Olympia, tracing an older footpath. Stagecoaches used it, and the Anderson homestead near today's NE 78th Street was the first stop north of town — Sarah Jane Anderson was known to entertain travelers on her violin. Today's Hazel Dell Avenue follows the line.
The local school held a naming contest. The finalists: Hazel Dell, for the stand of hazelnuts growing near the Anderson place, and Bear Gulch. The gulch lost.
The Legislature made this road the north–south trunk of Washington's first state highway system — the Canada-to-Mexico route that boosters had been organizing since 1910. Concrete reached from Vancouver to Salmon Creek by 1914.
The Interstate Bridge opened on Valentine's Day — toll, five cents a person, by automobile, bicycle, or horse (the horse an extra nickel). The Pacific Highway's last ferry crossing closed, and the border-to-border traffic came through here.
The final 36 miles of State Road No. 1 were paved in October, and the state formally opened the highway at Olympia on October 24. The Pacific Highway was billed as the longest continuous stretch of paved road in the world.
The Salmon Creek Cutoff — Federal Aid Project No. 147-B, 4.47 miles — opened June 30, 1925, bypassing the old alignment, and was concrete-paved August to December 1927. In spring 1930 the old road was renamed Hazel Dell Avenue. That is why Hazel Dell keeps two ghosts of the Pacific Highway running in parallel, with I-5 now threaded between them.
On November 11 the federal route numbers were adopted. The badge followed within the year: a steel cutout shield, black on white, reading WASHINGTON / U S / 99. Blaine to Calexico, border to border, about 1,600 miles — and this strip was on it.
The county's planners later inventoried what grew here in these years: “ten-room motels, drive-in carhop restaurants, a skating rink, bowling alley, mini-golf, new/used car lot sales, and full service gas stations.” The Hazel Dell Drive-In opened July 23, 1953 — 500 cars for Battle at Apache Pass. Dairy cattle still grazed within sight of the highway into the early 1970s.
Washington's first freeway opened through Vancouver on April 1, 1955. It was designated Interstate 5 in 1957 and pushed north through Hazel Dell in the early 1960s — splitting the community down the middle and taking the through-traffic with it.
I-5 was completed across Washington on May 14, 1969 — the last traffic light on the freeway between Canada and California came down at Everett. Six weeks later, on June 24, AASHO granted the state's request to eliminate US 99. (Most write-ups say 1968. The record says June 24, 1969.)
When Washington renumbered its highways, State Route 99 was drawn from Fife to Everett only. This stretch wasn't included. Four miles of the West Coast's old main road became NE Highway 99 — county principal arterial, maintained by Clark County Public Works, name intact.
Residents formed Team 99 in 2000 to take the corridor back from what the plan itself calls “a stark sea of asphalt.” Clark County adopted their Highway 99 Sub-Area Plan on December 16, 2008. The vision on file: a main street again.
ROUTE OF MARCH · NE 63RD ST TO NE 78TH ST · THIRD SATURDAY IN MAY
Once a year the through-lanes stop being a shortcut and go back to being a main street. Filed here so nobody is surprised except on purpose.
STATION · NE 88TH ST · MP 1.27 ±
The strip, past and present, logged from the shoulder with the affection the form conceals.
PARTIAL — THE FULL STRIP DOES NOT FIT ON ONE SHEET. MILEPOSTS MEASURED ALONG THE CENTERLINE FROM NE 63RD ST, ± A BLOCK.
Twenty-four AMF lanes, rolling since the “10-Strike Bowling” matchbook days of the 1950s. One of the strip's mid-century businesses that never stopped.
Breakfast anytime and a working pie case, up the block from the bowling house. The south anchor of the strip's surviving old guard.
On the old Anderson homestead at 78th & 99: deep-dish Chehalem blackberry pie, buckets of fried chicken, gas pumps out front — “On the 99 strip, 2 miles north of Vancouver,” per its own postcards. A Starbucks stands there now; one of the poles reportedly survives in a living room up in Woodland.
Opened with a tropical theme, a pool, and mini-golf; spent decades as the Value Motel, its roadside sign promising rooms from $21. The buildings stand, housing a recovery program today.
Basil Dhanens fixed Fords and farm equipment at the Pacific Highway and Poor Farm Road, built a biplane in the machine shop, and ran an airstrip that briefly became Hazel Dell Airport. Local business leaders proposed renaming the community Basilville. Basil declined.
Five hundred cars on opening night, July 23, 1953, for Battle at Apache Pass and Bonzo Goes to College. Self-storage and apartments now.
Harvey Johnson's carhop institution — and the reason the parade exists: he started it in 1964 so the school bands would have somewhere to march.
Every May since 1964 (save 2020–21): the road closes at 9:30 a.m., and some 25 school bands and 20,000 neighbors take the through-lanes from 63rd to 78th. The best thing that happens to this pavement all year.
The old accounts say only that “a stand of filberts” near the Anderson place named the entire community in 1886 — presumably the Northwest's native beaked hazelnut. The dell is still on file, under the asphalt.
Car lots and their pennant strings, teriyaki and pho and tacos, parts stores and thrift, a bowling house, a pie case. Unglamorous, open late, alive.
ROAD TEST · NORTHBOUND · MP 0.00–3.64 · ANY YEAR
The state shoots its routes from a camera van, one frame per hundredth of a mile — but only ever in the present. This van takes a year. Get in; the road steers itself along the real centerline. Change the year while it rolls and the world repaves around you.
STATION · NE 99TH ST · MP 1.80 ±
I live just off this road. From my street you can hear it — not loud, just constant: four miles of county arterial doing its job.
The state gave up the name in 1969, and when the internet started handing out names of its own, hwy99.org was somehow still on the shelf. So I filed a claim. Not because I run a historical society — I just live here, and it seemed wrong that nobody was keeping the record.
This page is that record: the dates, the pie, the parade, the concrete under the asphalt. If you have a photograph of the strip, a matchbook, a memory of the Totem Pole or the drive-in or cruising the lots — the domain is the filing cabinet.
— THE RESIDENT
HAZEL DELL, WASHINGTON
SUBMISSIONS: LOG@HWY99.ORG — PHOTOGRAPHS, MATCHBOOKS, MENUS, MEMORIES. THE CABINET IS OPEN; FILINGS APPEAR IN THE DOCKET, BELOW.
STATION · NE 117TH ST · MP 2.72 ±
The docket. Everything above is the compiler's work; this is where everybody else's comes in. Accepted submissions are numbered, dated, credited as you wish, and filed here — and where the record allows, they become strands in FIG. 3 and roadside in FIG. 4.
The stationing under every figure on this sheet: milepost control points measured along the road's mapped centerline, MP 0.00 at NE 63rd St. The old alignment measures 3.5 miles the same way.
| NE 63RD ST | MP 0.00 |
|---|---|
| NE 78TH ST | 0.75 |
| NE 88TH ST | 1.27 |
| NE 99TH ST | 1.80 |
| NE 117TH ST | 2.72 |
| I-5/I-205 JCT | 3.64 |
FILED BY: THE RESIDENT · GEOMETRY © OPENSTREETMAP CONTRIBUTORS, ODbL · MACHINE-READABLE: /DATA.JSON