Going back to June 2008, for an Oregon/Washington trip I took. Entirely west of the Cascades.
The Milky Way. Near Mount Rainier; well past the lights of the I-5 corridor.
The arc trail, by the way, is an airplane – note the break in the trail which occurred while I restarted the exposure.
And the find of the trip – this old-style Oregon 126 eagle highway marker. Marked 1/17/73 on the back; this style dates to 1948.
Mount Rainier at sunset.
The last remaining US-99 shield in Washington state. The Alaskan Way Viaduct was renumbered to state route 99 in 1969, but this shield remains at one of the on-ramps.
A waterfall by the side of state route 410 (former US-410).
Just before dawn, beside US-12.
A lake at sunrise.
Some old signs featuring the smallest number on an interstate shield ever.
This I-205 shield is in Washington, at the Oregon border. Alas, no state name. Those are all long gone.
Old Interstate 205 sign in Washington.
And in Oregon now, where they insist on giving the interstate shield to far too many things, like state route 99W. It was, at one point, US-99W, but it certainly was not ever an interstate.
Guide sign gantry in Eugene, Oregon with oddly fonted shields.
State-named shields in Oregon are very rare. Here are two out of three known.
Old green signs. Under Tigard, it clearly used to say Portland, but I have no idea what it said under the current Portland. Perhaps it said Seattle before I-205 was built.
End of US-26 at US-101.
Crossing into Washington, where they promptly mislabel US-101 as a state route. Oops!
Somewhere around Raymond, Washington, this old sign still remains.
Highway 101 curves around the Olympic Peninsula. Here it is signed north, but one may follow this route all the way to Los Angeles.
Here, 101 is signed east-west.
A village somewhere on the Olympic Peninsula.
US-101 with the Olympic Mountains in the background.
This should be state highway 112 here.
Nearing the northwest corner of the peninsula – and, by extension, the lower 48 states.
An older state highway 112 shield on a classic white wooden picket.
The patch on the 113 shield covers up a “131”.
This older Interstate 5 shield may not survive the construction equipment directly behind it.
Button copy is very scarce in Washington – here is some left on Interstate 5 northbound. Even older is the sign on the left: under the 167 patch is a state route 410 shield. The switch happened in 1973. Before 1964, the route was US-410.
The next sign is equally as old.
More great old button copy – on the ramp from 5 to 405.
The last known state-named I-405 shield. The entire gantry dates back to the 1960s.
An older airport trailblazer, featuring a very 1950s-looking jet airliner.
I like the US-112 “blooper”, it could be interesting to revive it as a child of US-12 in the state of Washington to counter the lost of US-112 in the early 1960s in Michigan http://www.usends.com/10-19/112/112.html
Hey Jake, there are a couple other sign goofs that I should clue you into. One is in Corvallis, OR, where there is a US 99W shield on a sign, then the other is in La Conner, WA, on the south side of town. There’s a US 20 shield where there should be a WA 20 shield.
Also, on the east side of Glacier National Park in Montana, there used to be a US 49 shield on Montana 49.
With respect to the US 99 shield in Seattle, its days are numbered… Sometime in the next 3-5 years, the Alaskan Way Viaduct is being removed and replaced with a tunnel underneath the downtown part of the city.
These are cools signs that you have compiled. Till your next trip.