page_title: Washington State Route 203
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Washington State Route 203 / History
context_page_description: State Route 203 is a state highway in the U.S. state of Washington that traverses part of King and Snohomish counties. It runs north–south through the Snoqualmie Valley, connecting Fall City, Carnation, Duvall, and Monroe. The highway terminates to the south at a roundabout with SR 202 near Fall City and to the north at a junction with U.S. Route 2 in Monroe.
  The road network along the Snoqualmie River developed in the early 20th century to connect communities that had been established near a branch of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. These county roads were paved and added to the state highway system in 1937 as Secondary State Highway 15B, which served as a connector between state highways in Fall City and Monroe.
  SSH 15B was straightened and rebuilt by the state government in the 1940s and 1950s before being replaced by SR 203 during the 1964 state highway renumbering. SR 203 was included as part of the proposed corridor for an outer freeway bypass, tentatively named Interstate 605, in the early 2000s. The highway was later improved by a series of construction projects, including the construction of two roundabouts in Fall City and Duvall.
context_section_description: The Snoqualmie Valley was settled in the late 19th century and its communities were originally connected by a series of unpaved country roads, among the earliest to be built in King County. The initial road was built on the west side of the valley in the 1870s and a new road on the east side followed in the late 1880s, connecting Fall City, Tolt (now Carnation), and Cherry Valley to Monroe. The road originally crossed the Skykomish River via a short ferry route when the waters were too high for fording by wagons and horses; this crossing was replaced by the first fixed, wooden bridge at the site in August 1894. A branch of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad was built along the east bank of the river in 1911, necessitating the relocation of the road and the entire town of Cherry Valley (now Duvall).
  The northernmost section of the road, along Lewis Street in downtown Monroe, was paved by the city government in 1912 and connected to a bridge over the Skykomish River that was rebuilt as a steel structure in 1915. The King County government followed suit with several state-funded paving projects on the eastern highway in the 1910s and 1920s. By the mid-1920s, the paved Snoqualmie Valley highway extended south from Monroe to the King–Snohomish county line north of Duvall, while the remainder was described as an improved road with varying quality. The road was incorporated into the state highway system in 1937 as Secondary State Highway 15B (SSH 15B), connecting Primary State Highway 15 (PSH 15) in Monroe to PSH 2 and U.S. Route 10 (US 10) in Fall City. The state legislature approved funds to pave the entire highway in 1937 and oiling of the road from Carnation to Duvall was completed two years later. The final paving projects were approved in 1945 and completed over the following three years alongside the replacement of sixteen wooden bridges. The state also straightened sections of SSH 15B near Fall City in the 1940s and through the Tualco Valley south of Monroe in the 1950s. The Lewis Street Bridge over the Skykomish River in Monroe was replaced by the state in 1957 at a cost of $526,000.
  The state legislature reformed the numbering system for state highways in 1964, re-designating SSH 15B as State Route 203. The branch railroad running parallel to the highway was abandoned in the 1970s and later converted into the Snoqualmie Valley Trail. The Tolt River Bridge in Carnation was replaced with a new span in 1977.
  The Snoqualmie Valley area was proposed in the late 1990s and early 2000s as the corridor for a proposed outer bypass of the Seattle metropolitan area, popularly named Interstate 605. The state legislature commissioned a study in 1998 to determine the feasibility of constructing the freeway, which would have traveled from southern King County to Everett via SR 18 and the SR 203 corridor in the Snoqualmie Valley. The study determined that through-travelers would have only saved five minutes over peak travel times and the legislature shelved the plan. A second study commissioned in 2003 determined that a highway built north of Snoqualmie would not be economically feasible and would fail to sufficiently benefit freight interests to justify its multibillion-dollar cost.
  In the 2000s, WSDOT began a series of construction projects on sections of the SR 203 corridor that aimed to improve traffic congestion and increase road safety. A roundabout was constructed in southern Duvall to replace the unsignalized intersection at Northeast 124th Street in 2004, the first to be built on a rural highway in Western Washington, and received favorable feedback from local residents. WSDOT completed construction of a second roundabout in 2008 at the highway's southern terminus with SR 202 in Fall City, costing $4 million. A 2004 study of potential improvements to SR 203 also suggested the addition of a rumble strip in the road's centerline, along with hard landscaping to force motorists to slow down when entering populated areas.
caption: A rural stretch of SR 203 between Duvall and Monroe
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