Sal on I-5 Northbound: Federal Way to Everett
By WithBy
Categories: Society & Culture, Places & Travel
The history, landmarks, and stories along I-5 northbound from Federal Way to Everett, timed to the drive exit by exit. Spoken by Sal and Peggy.
38 episodes indexed on PodSearch.
Recent episodes
- Exit 194 — A Long Pier
Sal: Between exits one hundred ninety-four and one hundred ninety-five. Sal: U.S. 2 meets the interstate here, at the west end of the Hewitt Avenue Trestle, two and a half miles across the Snohomish River, Ebey Island and Ebey Slough. Its pilings go through 90 to 100 feet of soft silt to reach…
- Exit 193 — Same Architect, Twice
Sal: Between exits one hundred ninety-three and one hundred ninety-four. Sal: Downtown Everett's Snohomish County Courthouse is built in the Spanish Mission style. It stands where an earlier courthouse burned in 1909, and the architect of the old one, August Heide, designed the new one as well…
- Exit 192 — A Prodigious Appetite
Sal: Between exits one hundred ninety-two and one hundred ninety-three. Sal: Everett was planned on a boat. In July 1890, on an Alaskan cruise, a lumberman, Henry Hewitt Junior, and a railroad man, Charles Colby, drew up plans for an industrial city on Port Gardner Bay, a Pittsburgh of the West…
- Exit 189 — The Boeing Freeway
Sal: Between exits one hundred eighty-nine and one hundred ninety-two. Sal: Four roads meet the freeway at this interchange. Highway 99 leaves as Everett Mall Way, State Route 527 goes south through Mill Creek, Broadway runs into the city, and State Route 526 goes west to the Boeing factory and…
- Exit 186 — A Wagon Road's Route
Sal: Between exits one hundred eighty-six and one hundred eighty-nine. Sal: Parts of the road at this exit are eighty years older than the freeway. Seattle Hill Road and 131st Street have run on the same line since 1885, when Snohomish County built a wagon road from Snohomish to Seattle. The west…
- Exit 183 — Little Landers
Sal: Between exits one hundred eighty-three and one hundred eighty-six. Sal: South of here, around 196th Street, was the heart of Alderwood Manor. In 1917 the Puget Mill Company, then the largest landowner in southern Snohomish County, laid out a planned community here, beside a station on the…
- Exit 182 — Half-Mannequins in Tuxes
Sal: Between exits one hundred eighty-two and one hundred eighty-three. Sal: This is the Swamp Creek Interchange, where I-405 meets I-5. The interchange was finished in 1984, and it gave the Eastside a new way to reach Alderwood and Lynnwood. Sal: Alderwood Mall was ten years in the making. Allied…
- Exit 181 — Named for Lynn
Sal: Between exits one hundred eighty-one and one hundred eighty-two. Sal: Lynnwood got its name in 1937. A Seattle realtor, Karl O'Beirn, filed a plat where Highway 99 meets 196th Street Southwest, and he named it for his wife, Lynn. Businesses nearby took up the name, and in 1946 the chamber of…
- Exit 179 — Thirty-Four Votes
Sal: Between exits one hundred seventy-nine and one hundred eighty-one. Sal: By 1954, 5,104 people lived in Mountlake Terrace's one square mile, and the average adult was 26. The growth had swamped everything. A telephone took a year to get, and when it came it was a party line, shared with nine…
- Exit 178 — Houses on a Runway
Sal: Between exits one hundred seventy-eight and one hundred seventy-nine. Sal: Mountlake Terrace began in 1949, when developers Albert LaPierre and Jack Peterson bought an abandoned airstrip, just over the Snohomish County line. They filled it with cinder-block houses of 640 square feet, priced…
- Exit 177 — Grunge, Recorded Nearby
Sal: Between exits one hundred seventy-seven and one hundred seventy-eight. Sal: In Shoreline, the brothers Rick and Raj Parashar opened London Bridge Studio in 1985. The bands of that era made it internationally known: Mother Love Bone, Temple of the Dog, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and Pearl…
- Exit 176 — A Station Called Ronald
Sal: Between exits one hundred seventy-six and one hundred seventy-seven. Sal: Before the freeway, Shoreline's commuters rode the Interurban. By 1910 its electric trains ran between Everett and Tacoma, at better than thirty miles an hour. Sal: Judge James Ronald gave the line a right-of-way…
- Exit 175 — Shore to Shore
Sal: Between exits one hundred seventy-five and one hundred seventy-six. Sal: This exit is 145th Street, State Route 523, all two and a half miles of it. It's the southern boundary of the city of Shoreline. Sal: That name came in 1944, from the school district. Its boundaries ran Shore to Shore…
- Exit 174 — Five Years Early
Sal: Between exits one hundred seventy-four and one hundred seventy-five. Sal: Pinehurst light rail station stands beside the freeway at Northeast 130th Street. It was deferred, then funded by a 2016 ballot measure and scheduled to open in 2031. A plan to speed it up was approved in 2020, and it…
- Exit 173 — Bringing Home the Bacon
Sal: Between exits one hundred seventy-three and one hundred seventy-four. Sal: Northgate Mall opened in 1950, outside the Seattle city limits at the time. In 2018 its owner announced it would redevelop the fifty-five-acre mall with hotels, housing, offices and a hockey rink. The Kraken Community…
- Exit 172 — The Boulevard Blowout
Sal: Between exits one hundred seventy-two and one hundred seventy-three. Sal: Just south of here, the freeway's North Seattle section opened on August 28, 1963, with access to Bothell Way. That road is State Route 522 now, and inside the city it's Lake City Way, running northeast through Maple…
- Exit 171 — Lake Green
Sal: Between exits one hundred seventy-one and one hundred seventy-two. Sal: Green Lake is close by. A surveyor, David Phillips, named it in 1855. His first notes called it Lake Green, because even in its natural state it's prone to algae blooms. No stream runs in or out of it now. Sal: In 1950 an…
- Exit 170 — Boulevard on a Creek
Sal: Between exits one hundred seventy and one hundred seventy-one. Sal: Ravenna Boulevard has a grassy median, built over a creek bed. Ravenna Creek once carried Green Lake's water to Lake Washington. In 1911 the lake was lowered seven feet to make parkland, and the creek dried up between the…
- Exit 169 — Cherry Trees, Rerouted
Sal: Between exits one hundred sixty-nine and one hundred seventy. Sal: This is the University District. In 1911 Virgil Bogue proposed a subway from downtown to here. The U District light rail station opened on October 2, 2021. Peggy: A hundred and ten years. Worth the wait. Sal: The university's…
- Exit 168 — Bridges Over Water
Sal: Between exits one hundred sixty-eight and one hundred sixty-nine. Sal: At Roanoke Park, State Route 520 meets the interstate and heads for Bellevue and Redmond across Lake Washington on the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge. Near its start it crosses Portage Bay. The 1960s Portage Bay Bridge…
- Exit 167 — Weave Here
Sal: Between exits one hundred sixty-seven and one hundred sixty-eight. Sal: This exit is Mercer Street, which serves South Lake Union. Beyond it, in Lower Queen Anne, is the Seattle Center, built for the 1962 World's Fair, with the 605-foot Space Needle. Sal: This stretch is known for its weave…
- Exit 166 — Lanes That Turn Around
Sal: Between exits one hundred sixty-six and one hundred sixty-seven. Sal: The express lanes in the middle reverse direction depending on the time of day. The first section opened on June 2, 1965, with 13 access ramps between Olive Way and Northgate Mall. Peggy: A road that changes its mind twice…
- Exit 165 — Thirteen Lanes, One Lid
Sal: Between exits one hundred sixty-five and one hundred sixty-six. Sal: Through downtown the freeway is thirteen lanes, among the widest in the United States, filling the whole block between Sixth and Seventh Avenues. On June 1, 1961, a hundred citizens marched against the trench and asked for a…
- Exit 164 — A Wrong Turn
Sal: Between exits one hundred sixty-four and one hundred sixty-five. Sal: This is where Interstate 90 meets I-5. It is the longest Interstate in the country, 3,099.7 miles to Boston. Sal: Here I-5 rides a viaduct over the International District. Building it divided Seattle's Chinatown, which led…
- Exit 163 — Boeing Hill
Sal: Between exits one hundred sixty-three and one hundred sixty-four. Sal: The ridge alongside is Beacon Hill. The Duwamish call it Greenish-Yellow Spine, probably for the deciduous trees that once grew thick on it. Early settlers called it Holgate and Hanford Hill, after two of them. Then M…
PodSearch is a free, independent podcast search engine. Read about PodSearch, the privacy policy or contact us.