US 99 in the Mount Vernon, Burlington and Bellingham areas

[Max Rockatansky]

US Route 99 in the vicinity of the cities of Mount Vernon, Burlington and Bellingham was carried by various alignments between 1926-1969.  The original alignment which was inherited from the Pacific Highway followed the highly scenic Chuckanut Drive.  Chuckanut Drive later became US Route 99 Alternate in 1937 following the completion of the Lake Samish bypass.  A second US Route 99 Alternate was designated in 1952 from Bellingham north to the Canadian border via Secondary State Highway 1B.  In the waning years of US Route 99 the highway was subject to further realignments as Interstate 5 was constructed.  This blog serves as a history of the alignments of US Route 99 in Mount Vernon, Burlington and Bellingham.

https://www.gribblenation.org/2025/11/former-us-route-99-in-mount-vernon.html?m=1

[cahwyguy]

Is Washington Pacific SOUTHwest? Took me a minute to figure out this was Washington.

[Bruce]

A correction: Downtown Bellingham was originally the City of Whatcom. The City of Sehome was further southeast, where the current Sehome neighborhood is.

It should be noted that despite being a winding and generally challenging place to build anything, the Chuckanut Drive corridor also has a mainline railroad (on the shore) and a former interurban railway (closer to the highway level) hugging the cliffs. Said interurban was disrupted a few times by some wood trestles catching fire because they weren't covered in creosote.

[Max Rockatansky]

I had more a lot of railroad stuff in the first draft of Part 1.  Usually it isn't really much of a problem incorporating for single community blogs.  I did end up thinking the railroad stuff was making the segment long given this blog encompassed several communities.  That US 99A stuff is about when I started to cut out railroad history and just stick to the highway corridors. 

I can add more railroad information in for Part 2 as it relates to Chuckanut Drive.  I'll need to think about how to articulate that though given I try to keep road photo segments fairly concise. 

I must have been tired when I woke up this morning.  I didn't even notice I had posted on the wrong board.

[74/171FAN]

I must have been tired when I woke up this morning.  I didn't even notice I had posted on the wrong board.

I did not catch it until cahwyguy mentioned it, and thought, yeah I should move this.