Sal on I-90 Westbound: Ellensburg to Seattle
By WithBy
Categories: Society & Culture, Places & Travel
The history, geology, and stories along I-90 westbound from Ellensburg to Seattle, timed to the drive exit by exit. Spoken by Sal and Peggy.
39 episodes indexed on PodSearch.
Recent episodes
- Exit 3 — Boston, Eventually
Sal: Between exits two and three. Sal: Interstate 90 begins down by Seattle's stadiums, and it does not quit until Boston. That is about thirty-one hundred miles, the longest interstate in the country. If you were planning to finish it today, I admire the ambition. Peggy: Pack a sandwich. Sal: The…
- Exit 6 — Hadley's Folly
Sal: Between exits three and six. Sal: Between Rainier Avenue and Mercer Island, this freeway does two unlikely things. It tunnels through a hill, and it floats on a lake. Sal: The hill is Mount Baker Ridge. The newer tunnel bore opened in June of 1989, sixty-three feet across and dug through…
- Exit 7 — See, Hear, Smell
Sal: Between exits six and seven. Sal: Across the north end of Mercer Island, the freeway runs under a lid: a landscaped park laid over a bending stretch of roadway. It carries the name of the man who argued for it. Sal: Aubrey Davis and his wife Henrietta made their home on the island in 1960. He…
- Exit 8 — Cold Beer, Warm Welcome
Sal: Between exits seven and eight. Sal: In the middle of Mercer Island the freeway runs in the open, with a light rail station in its median beside a park and ride. It arrived with the Crosslake Connection on March 28, 2026: the final seven-mile stretch of the 2 Line, which added stations here…
- Exit 9 — Island, Now With Bridge
Sal: Between exits eight and nine. Sal: This stretch crosses the East Channel of Lake Washington, on two parallel steel box girders. The one from 1981 carries one direction of traffic and the greenway trail. Its partner, from 1988, carries the other direction and the light rail. Peggy: Two…
- Exit 10 — The Lake Moved
Sal: Between exits nine and ten. Sal: The wetland along this stretch is Mercer Slough, and it used to be a lot wetter. Before 1917 it was more an arm of Lake Washington than a creek, broad and deep enough for stern-wheelers and log rafts. A small sawmill worked the upper end by 1894, floating its…
- Exit 11 — Zero Stoves Made
Sal: Between exits ten and eleven. Sal: Factoria's name was a wish, plain and simple. In 1908 a man named E. L. Skeel and some Seattle investors formed the Mercer Land Company and laid out blocks beside the railroad tracks. A stove factory went up on the townsite. It never turned out a single…
- Exit 13 — Spire, Trimmed to Fit
Sal: Between exits eleven and thirteen. Sal: The Eastgate stretch of I-90 carries about a hundred and fifty thousand vehicles on an average day, more than any other piece of the highway. So if it feels busy, it is not personal. Peggy: It's a little personal. Sal: North of the freeway here, near…
- Exit 15 — The Free Zoo
Sal: Between exits thirteen and fifteen. Sal: Through here the freeway runs between the slopes of Cougar Mountain and the edge of Lake Sammamish, on its way between Bellevue and Issaquah. Sal: On the north slope of Cougar Mountain, on eleven acres, is the Cougar Mountain Zoo. Peter and Marcie…
- Exit 17 — Three Names, One Snake
Sal: Between exits fifteen and seventeen. Sal: Issaquah has had more names than most towns bother with. Settlers arriving in the 1860s said Squak, their own pronunciation of Is-qu-ah, the word spoken by about two hundred Native people living around here. Then residents switched to Gilman, after…
- Exit 18 — Alps, Technically
Sal: Between exits seventeen and eighteen. Sal: The hills around Issaquah carry a big name for their size: the Issaquah Alps. Harvey Manning put it in print in 1977, in a trail guidebook called Footsore 1. On the map those hills were foothills. He called them Alps anyway, and the grander name was…
- Exit 20 — Chocolate, Then Broadway
Sal: Between exits eighteen and twenty. Sal: Issaquah's candy maker took the long way here. Julius Boehm was born in Vienna in 1897. He ran the 400 meter relay for Austria at the 1924 Paris Olympics, and later carried the Olympic torch across a kilometer of Austrian ground on its way to Berlin. In…
- Exit 22 — Five Names, One Road
Sal: Between exits twenty and twenty-two. Sal: Along here the freeway runs through the heavily forested Issaquah Alps, skirting the north edge of the Tiger Mountain State Forest. The hundred miles of I-90 between Seattle and Thorp are the Mountains to Sound Greenway, named a National Scenic Byway…
- Exit 25 — Shingles and Sparkling Water
Sal: Between exits twenty-two and twenty-five. Sal: Preston sits on the northeast edge of Tiger Mountain State Forest, against the Raging River, and a mill gave it its reason for being. August and Emil Lovegren, Swedish immigrants, founded the Preston Mill Company, and the men who came to work for…
- Exit 27 — The Diamond Crossover
Sal: Between exits twenty-five and twenty-seven. Sal: Where SR 18 meets I-90 is a diverging diamond. Traffic on SR 18 crosses to the opposite side of the road to pass beneath the freeway bridges, then crosses back. Nobody has to turn across oncoming cars, so the signals need fewer phases. The…
- Exit 31 — A Church on Rails
Sal: Between exits twenty-seven and thirty-one. Sal: Snoqualmie keeps a church that was built to ride the rails. The Messenger of Peace is a chapel car, seventy feet long, put together in 1898 for the American Baptist Home Mission Society. Women of the church raised the money for it, and it got…
- Exit 32 — Pie, Coffee, Neon
Sal: Between exits thirty-one and thirty-two. Sal: North Bend is the town David Lynch put on the map with Twin Peaks, which was partly filmed here. Twede's Cafe, which played the Double R Diner in the show, calls itself a place both wonderful and strange, and by its own account a visit hardly…
- Exit 34 — Where I-90 Began
Sal: Between exits thirty-two and thirty-four. Sal: This is where the interstate started on this side of the mountains. In 1957 North Bend held a ribbon cutting for the first piece of the new Interstate 90 west of Snoqualmie Pass. It ran 3.7 miles, from North Bend to Tanner, with four lanes where…
- Exit 38 — Edgewick, Washed Out
Sal: Between exits thirty-four and thirty-eight. Sal: Past North Bend the freeway follows the South Fork of the Snoqualmie. Sal: There used to be a town along here called Edgewick. Its name was stitched together from two settlers, Vinnedge and Weeks. It was the North Bend Lumber Company's town…
- Exit 42 — Too Much Dynamite
Sal: Between exits thirty-eight and forty-two. Sal: Above the river on this stretch runs the old grade of the Milwaukee Road. Between the Change Creek and Hull Creek viaducts, a construction contractor named McLean used too much dynamite and blew out the roadbed he was supposed to be building…
- Exit 45 — Rough Field Landing
Sal: Between exits forty-two and forty-five. Sal: Beside the freeway in the upper valley is a strip of turf called Bandera State Airport: one runway, 2,344 feet long, at an elevation of 1,636 feet. The state's aviation division owns it. It was built in 1948 as one of the first state airports, and…
- Exit 47 — Talapus, Mostly Mud
Sal: Between exits forty-five and forty-seven. Sal: Near here, a forest road runs under the freeway to the Talapus Lake trailhead. The trail climbs at a moderate grade through dark, cool forest, past tall cedars and hemlocks, with Talapus Creek running downhill beside it. Peggy: Cedars, hemlocks…
- Exit 52 — Wagon Ruts, Waterfalls
Sal: Between exits forty-seven and fifty-two. Sal: This is the steep grade just below Snoqualmie Pass. Near the Asahel Curtis Picnic Area, the two directions of the freeway split around a wide median that holds the Denny Creek Campground, and the road runs on two high viaducts. Sal: Between them…
- Exit 53 — Four Resorts, One Summit
Sal: Between exits fifty-two and fifty-three. Sal: This is Snoqualmie Pass, and the ski slopes here are the Summit at Snoqualmie: four base areas that used to be individually owned and operated resorts. Summit West was once named Snoqualmie Summit, Summit Central was Ski Acres, and Summit East was…
- Exit 54 — City Park, Too Far
Sal: Between exits fifty-three and fifty-four. Sal: Skiing up here began as a city park. In 1933 the city of Seattle opened Municipal Park on the ground that is now Summit West. It ran the place until 1937, when the townspeople decided Snoqualmie Pass was too far away to be run as a city park…
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