Traveling by car this holiday season? Are you taking a Washington highway map with you? You might find this highway map from 1927 pretty interesting. Many of the major highways in our state didn’t even exist when this map was published by Highway Map Co. Back then, Interstate 90 was nonexistent and U.S. Route 99 was a precursor to Interstate 5, which is the longest north-south freeway on the West Coast. It’s hard to imagine Washington today without I-5 and I-90. If you take a closer look, you’ll also notice there were not yet highways over many of the passes, like Stevens Pass, the North Cascades, Chinook Pass or White Pass.

You may have also noticed that the Highway 101 loop around the Olympic Peninsula was unfinished at the time this map was created. More highway maps can be found by searching “highways” on the Digital Archives main page.