On 23 January 1945, while the nation was still fighting Word War II in Europe and the Pacific, the Bellingham City Council and Whatcom County Council passed a resolution urging Washington State legislators to provide the funds and make the plans to improve Highway 99 through Bellingham.1  After years of neglect during the Depression 1930s and the war years of 1941-1945 improvements to the road network were desperately needed throughout the state.2  However, not until 1966 would Bellingham residents receive their long sought-after improvements to “Pacific Highway U.S. Road No. 99.” 3

The lobbying for, planning and construction of Interstate 5 through Bellingham occurred within a discernable context of relationships between local, state, and federal interests.  Priorities at each level of government affected these relationships and reflect dynamics of power, influence, and ideology.  The Bellingham community was one of thousands of American communities to experience these impacts directly.  A study of the completion of this essential piece of the modern American transportation infrastructure illustrates how a community with a traditional, resource-extraction based economy reacted as local industries declined and failed; how this local economic downturn decreased local influence with state agencies about transportation decisions; and how Cold War and consumer ideologies are apparent in federal, state and local highway planning. 

In 1945 Highway 99 through western Whatcom County was the latest in a series of gradual improvements to local, state, and national automobile thoroughfares.  Outside the city limits of Bellingham—both north and south—the roadway federally designated as Highway 99 was a network of road sections built during in the 1920s and 1930s.4 Inside city limits, however, the highway was nothing more than a patchwork of city streets.5  Since Highway 99 was the main north-south route through western Washington all vehicle traffic between the Everett-Seattle-Tacoma-Olympia area and Vancouver, British Columbia was forced to travel at slow speeds through the circuitous network of downtown Bellingham streets.  This transportation situation served the interests of the central business district and industries within the city limits, but eventually the traffic load upon city streets became excessive.  The resulting transportation problems within Bellingham were more than a simple widening could solve, warranting a city council resolution of 23 January 1945 urging the state to make drastic improvements to the highway.

The first of four discernable phases in the process of Interstate construction through Bellingham occurred between January 1945 and September 1953 and is characterized by increasing local agitation, gradual state response, and a relatively minimal level of federal involvement in the project.  During this period—indeed, until the passage of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956—the federal government played a relatively small role in highway planning and construction at the state level.  Federal-Aid Highway Acts of 1925 and 1944, among others, designated a contiguous system of national highways and set the stage for a National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Surveying, engineering and construction of this road network was the responsibility of the individual states, and Federal contributions towards these projects could not exceed fifty percent. 6

In 1947 the State of Washington began the process of improving state roadways in the post-war era.  That year the legislature authorized the creation of a Joint Fact-Finding Committee on Highways, Streets and Bridges to address statewide needs.   On 1 September 1948, engineers working under this committee published an engineering report, Highways in Washington’s Future, which was the first post-war attempt to survey Washington’s existing road situation and offer planning solutions.  However, the report went further by conflating the highway program and vehicle ownership with individual freedom and a higher standard of living by asserting that “the social values resulting from the freedom of individual movement” were so far-reaching “as to defy measurement” because “the motor age has broadened the horizon of every individual, giving him new opportunity to raise his standard of living, and enlarged his understanding of the world in which he lives.”7 Therefore, as this argument purports, the highway system was not merely a mode of transportation but a way to reap the benefits of American citizenship. 

Community and business leaders and other citizens of Bellingham were vocal advocates for improvements to Highway 99 in order to relieve excessive congestion through downtown and because improvements to highways were seen as concurrently improving highway safety. 8 An editorial printed in the Bellingham Herald from March 1950 suggests another reason why local and even state leaders sought to improve state highways:  because “the state that has the best transportation system will win” the race to become “the New York of the West.”9  This perspective suggests that certain influential local and state leaders perceived their state to be in active competition with Oregon and California for industrial development and overseas markets.

In spite of years of state research and hearings on the matter of highway improvements and lobbying by Bellingham and Whatcom County officials no definitive action had yet been taken by the final months of 1953.  Frustrated with this lack of progress, on 8 September 1953 the Bellingham City Council passed a resolution declaring a “state of traffic emergency” in Bellingham.10 

As if responding directly to the 8 September resolution the State Highway Department announced on 7 October the route of the improved highway between the Nooksack River Bridge in Ferndale and Northwest Avenue at the northern edge of Bellingham.11  This announcement constituted the first tangible action by the state for alleviating the congestion along Highway 99 through downtown Bellingham; though the route did not directly affect the most congested areas of the highway it was a step towards a solution. 

The end of 1953 heralds the second phase of interstate construction through Bellingham as discussions between local and state leaders regarding the placement of the freeway right-of-way within city limits grew contentious.  These discussions between October 1953 and May 1955 illustrate the shifting power relationship between Bellingham and Washington State highway officials as significant long-time industrial interests in Bellingham continued to decline or closed altogether.  At the national level, Cold War politics and the expanding consumer economy began to influence the debate on state and Federal highway planning, a perspective that coalesced on 21 February 1955 with President Eisenhower’s pivotal speech.

The Bellingham Herald attempted to convince Bellingham residents that there was “no reason for gloom” in the local economy, predicting a future “brighter than anything before seen in the area” because of national projections of increased industrial growth and personal income.12  If Bellingham residents were not to feel gloomy about the local economy they certainly were entitled to feel somewhat apprehensive because by the mid-1950s most of the formerly stable local industrial concerns were either closing or significantly declining.  Four important local resource-extraction based industries operating within the city limits of Bellingham for decades had either closed by mid-1950s or would be closed soon after. 13 Bellingham was one of many smaller municipalities facing this phenomenon of “deindustrialization” involving local resource depletion that contributed, in turn, to a decline of formerly prominent local industries.14 

Local and state officials and Bellingham citizens debated the merits of the two proposed routes—the eastside Lincoln Street route and the waterfront route—throughout the summer of 1954; these debates reached a peak in October of that year.15  Bellingham government and business leaders sought a waterfront route for a proposed limited-access highway through city limits because this route would serve all of the town’s major industrial and commercial concerns.  It is not difficult to understand the position held by the advocates of the waterfront route, particularly in light of Bellingham’s declining economy.16 The Lincoln Street route, on the other hand, would by-pass all of Bellingham’s industrial and commercial districts.

Even before the comparative routes and corresponding cost estimates were made public in a 15 February 1955 Herald article the newspaper reported that the State Highway Department favored the Lincoln Street route over the waterfront route.17  The fact that the Lincoln Street route would be less expensive than the waterfront route because it passed through lower-density urban and semi-rural real estate was of critical importance to state highway planners.  Advocates for the waterfront route, however, argued that cost estimates did not reflect the intangible costs that the City of Bellingham would incur with the construction of the Lincoln Street Route, such as the dissection of neighborhoods and school districts. 18  However, in spite of arguments by Bellingham city and business leaders the tangible cost difference between the proposed routes was more important to state highway planners because the state could only expect the federal government to cover fifty percent of these costs.  The state wanted to get the most miles out of its highway investments.

The intangible reasons that compelled local interests to favor the waterfront route were of minor consequence to state planners.  Industrial expansion was occurring in Western Whatcom County at the time but outside the city limits of Bellingham.19  Rather than considering central Bellingham as the hub of the local industrial economy, state planners tacitly acknowledged that most present and future industrial development would occur outside the city limits.  Therefore, the state’s compelling interest in the Lincoln Street Route was a manifestation of a preference for the least expensive and least congested route through Bellingham that would enable access to the new industries being built and planned for Whatcom County and that would shorten the overland shipping times to and from Canada. Though many Bellingham citizens and community leaders continued to lobby for the waterfront route, the ultimate power to make the decision rested with the state.20 

As the community waited for the decision from Washington State highway officials a pivotal event occurred at the federal level that would revolutionize interstate highway planning.  On 21 February 1955 President Eisenhower gave a speech before Congress outlining his case for a National System of Interstate and Defense Highways under federal guidance and with significant federal financial support.  Eisenhower argued that his plan would save lives, decrease the economic costs of inefficient roadways, and relieve traffic congestion—reasons that Bellingham city leaders and private citizens would agree with after nine years of lobbying the state for improvements to Highway 99.  The President included another primary rationale for his national highway program, however, that definitively places his outlook within the context of Cold War ideology:  Eisenhower claimed that the improved road network would enable urban citizens to “move out of target areas quickly in case of attack”—that is, to relieve so-called “deadline congestion.”21

The edition of the Bellingham Herald that greeted city residents on 22 February 1955 formed a visual impression that had the effect—intended or not—of confirming all of the worst fears implicit in Eisenhower’s speech to Congress the day before.  The headline read:  “Ike Warns Escape Highways Needed,” referencing the lead story that outlined President Eisenhower’s speech to Congress the previous day.  Three other items on this same front-page stand out as if to support Eisenhower’s contention.  One article reported “Russia Ahead of U.S. in Nuclear Weapons.”  To the right of that headline was a photograph of spectators watching a rising mushroom-cloud from an atomic weapon detonated at Yucca Flat, Nevada.  Below that photograph was an article describing this test.22 The impression created upon the reader of this edition of the Herald is that one must be in favor of a national system of interstate highways because the Soviets possessed more nuclear weapons than the United States and mushroom clouds could be appearing over American cities at any time.

It is not necessary to suppose that the front page of this edition of the Herald was consciously constructed to equate a federal highway program with survival during an atomic attack, but this example does suggest a correlation between these issues in the minds of Americans during this era.  At least in part the decision to build the interstate freeway system was motivated by fear, and Eisenhower was not afraid to use fear to get support for the program.  While an intangible influence, this was part of the context in the ensuing months when the Herald ran a front page report on the state’s decision to route the freeway through Bellingham along the Lincoln Street route.23

 The beginning of the third phase of Interstate 5 construction through Bellingham commenced with a small caption and a simple map of the Lincoln Street route in the 27 May 1955 edition of the Herald.  There were no accompanying articles or editorials in this or any subsequent edition of Bellingham’s newspaper-of-record explaining the reasons for the decision or community reactions (either positive or negative) to it.  The relative silence about this major decision—made in opposition to the desires of many prominent business people, government officials, school district leaders and other private citizens—remains inexplicable.  The routing decision made by the state suggests, however, that the period between June 1955 and December 1960 followed the logic outlined during the October 1953- May 1955 period:  Bellingham’s political influence seemingly shrank with the declining local economy as state highway planners opted for the less expensive route connecting the British Columbia markets, Seattle-area metropolitan interests, and Whatcom County industries. 

On 28 August 1956 Herald reporter Larry Hilderbrand published the results of a small survey of Bellingham residents who had sold their property to the state right-of-way agents, and these results were not as positive as the state agent had previously portrayed.24 This article constitutes the most significant expression of public sentiment regarding the freeway construction process that was printed by the Herald between 1945 and 1966.  State agents responsible for determining fair purchase prices for right-of-way parcels claimed to be working “for the taxpayer, not against him” but local testimonials as those recorded by Hilderbrand and contemporary studies suggest otherwise.25 

The opening of the Northwest Avenue to Fielding Street portion of Interstate 5 on 5 December 1960 signified the end of the third phase of freeway construction through Bellingham and marked the beginning of the fourth and final phase. Planning and surveying for this final segment of the freeway had been ongoing since 1955, though land acquisition and right-of-way clearing did not begin until the early 1960s.26

The final phase of construction—between December 1960 and November 1966—was a fulfillment of the preceding processes, tendencies, and relationships.  This final phase also suggests the path that Bellingham was to take through the remainder of the twentieth century and can serve as a preview of community developments to come.   These developments are most clearly seen in the continuing growth of commercial areas at the fringes of town and attempts by local businesses to attract non-local customers. 

As industries within the city limits of Bellingham were closing the retail core of the central business district disintegrated and retail businesses moved to the outskirts of town.  The “Bellingham Mall,” built in the late 1960s, was the first major commercial development outside of the central business district, and was followed by more intensive commercial development throughout the 1980s and 1990s.27  These developments were typical examples of freeway-inspired urban sprawl that characterized American society during the last decades of the twentieth century.28

As local extraction industries closed and retail businesses moved to the outskirts of town some neighborhoods in Bellingham sought to capitalize on their historic character to attract tourism.  This kind of tourist-based development relied upon historical, cultural, and environmental aspects that would have been destroyed had the waterfront route of the freeway been approved.  

The changes brought about by the construction of Interstate 5 through Bellingham resonate to this day.  Initially, the project began as a state-sponsored plan of gradual improvements to the old, meandering Highway 99 that had become unsafe and congested through Bellingham.  Local interests favored a waterfront route that would have, in their estimation, best served the industrial and commercial interests of the community; the state, however, preferred the less-expensive route along Lincoln Street as a way to connect industries within Washington State and to Canada.  In 1955 the state opted to build along a different route, signifying a shift of regional power away from the traditional, resource-extraction based industries represented by Bellingham business leaders and towards a newer economy within which Bellingham was merely a hinterland for the Seattle-area metropolis.  Aspects of a mid-century Cold War and consumer-oriented ideology were manifest at the federal level with the equation of highways with freedom and safety from atomic attack in Eisenhower’s speeches and in the unfolding of federal legislation, particularly the 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act that created the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.  These local, state, and federal developments set the stage for the final phase of freeway construction that completed the route of Interstate 5 through Bellingham, and the completion of this project, in turn, suggested the path that the city would take during the remaining decades of the twentieth century.  The freeway is now taken for granted by countless local commuters and international travelers, but the story of Interstate 5 through Bellingham was multi-faceted, and the local and national repercussions of this segment of the largest public works project in the history of the world reverberate into the present.