Seattle Now & Then: Chuckanut Drive, ca 1920

jrsherrard

1 year ago

THEN1: Bellingham photographer M.F. Jukes perched atop a 15-foot boulder over Chuckanut Drive circa 1920, looking south to Pigeon Point. The Everett-Bellingham Interurban trestle curves along Samish Bay. Unseen in this photo, Great Northern Railway tracks hug the shore.

NOW1: The prospect from Jukes’ boulder is now obscured by fir trees, as is the view of Samish Bay. A single car speeds along the narrow lanes, paved with asphalt since 1960. (Jean Sherrard)

Published in The Seattle Times online on April 6, 2025
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on April 3, 2025

Cruise along Chuckanut Drive – ‘an incomparable panorama’ since 1916

By Jean Sherrard

For my Grandpa Jean, a truck driver originally from Stillwater, Oklahoma, the journey was the destination.

In the 1930s, he crisscrossed Washington state in his trucks and was eager to share his scenic discoveries with a growing young family.

Hugging the steep sides of Chuckanut Mountain south

An early, unpaved section of highway showcases the sandstone cliffs of Chuckanut Mountain. Sturdy concrete guardrails replaced wooden fences attached to stone bollards in the mid-1920s. Distinctive Chuckanut sandstone adorns many buildings throughout the Northwest.

of Bellingham, Chuckanut Drive offered breathtaking vistas across Samish Bay and must have attracted the ex-Okie flatlander like a bee to honey.

Parking along the two-lane road and scrambling down to a small Pigeon Point cove for picnics became a family tradition. Sandy beaches, busy crab pots and massive Burlington Northern trains (and the pennies they flattened) colored childhood memories.

Chuckanut Drive has always taken the “drive” part of its name seriously. It can be traversed by car,

Concrete guardrails above a 1925 Chuckanut Drive bridge reveal a road without shoulders or sidewalks, carved directly from the cliff-face. The Chuckanut Mountains are said by some to be “the only place where the Cascades come west down to meet the sea.”

motorcycle or a particularly intrepid bicycle, but its narrow curves chiseled into precipitous sandstone cliffs leave scant margins for error (or photographers!). Likewise, its creation story boasts twists and turns worthy of dime-store novellas.

Primitive and undependable, the earliest north-south passages along the west side of Chuckanut Mountain were subject to falling rocks and high tides.

The Salish Sea and several San Juan islands are seen from today’s Burlington Northern tracks, 200 feet below Chuckanut Drive. Chuckanut is an Indigenous word meaning “long beach far from a narrow entrance.”

After the Great Northern Railway bought the right-of-way along the shoreline in 1893, road improvements were stalled to prevent landslides that might impede rail traffic.

In 1910, a nascent state highway department took control, hiring inexperienced convict crews to carve out stone ledges watched over by guards with shotguns. After 5.5 grueling miles, money ran out, and labor ground to a halt. With a further injection of state funding, contractors finally completed the task.

Hailed upon its spring 1916 opening, the road boasted a slew of firsts. A glowing Seattle Times account proclaimed it “the first link of the Pacific Highway from Vancouver B.C. to San Francisco to parallel salt water.” The route also handily connected Skagit Valley farms to Whatcom County ports, “proving its utilitarian value” while providing “an incomparable panorama of Western Washington.”

An outdoor concert stage in Larrabee State Park

What’s more, Bellingham’s Charles Larrabee, encouraged by Gov. Ernest Lister, donated 20 acres of forested land along the road’s northern stretch, which became Washington’s first state park. Proclaimed the Times, “It will undoubtedly be appreciated by tourists desiring an ideal picnic spot.”

In 1919, Chuckanut Drive began to be paved and widened, attracting even more sightseers. By the mid-1920s, tourist-filled buses with observation windows shared the highway with Prohibition-skirting smugglers of liquor and drugs from Canada.

The Larrabee family gifted the state another 1,500 nearby acres in 1937. Today’s 2,683-acre Larrabee State Park is one of the state’s largest and most popular — and just one of the many hallmarks of spectacular Chuckanut Drive.