page_title: U.S. Route 97 Alternate
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: U.S. Route 97 Alternate / History
caption_attribution_description: Farmland on the inside of a bend in the Columbia River. In the background, Lake Chelan. Highway 97 flanks the Columbia on both sides. Note that the farmland is on flats: one on river silt, and the other atop the edge of the &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Plateau" rel="nofollow"&gt;Colombia Plateau&lt;/a&gt;. Between the two, and under the plateau farmland, is one of the largest outpourings of lava in the known history of the world.The town of Entiat is on the left or west side, in the middle of this shot. Corbaley Canyon is on the right, and forks into Pine Canyon and McGinnis Canyon in the high plateau on the right. Moody Canyon comes in below Entiat on the left. Dick Mesa is beyond that. Wenatchee National Forest is on the left as well.
context_page_description: U.S. Route 97 Alternate is an alternate route of US 97 within the state of Washington. It runs for 40 miles from Wenatchee to Chelan, following the west bank of the Columbia River opposite from US 2 and US 97. The highway travels through sparsely-populated areas along the river and passes near the Rocky Reach Dam and through the town of Entiat.
  Wagon roads along the west side of the Columbia River were plotted in the 1880s by American settlers and added to the state highway system in 1897. The wagon road was designated as State Road 10 and was completely paved by the late 1930s. US 97 was created in 1926 and followed the highway, which was relocated in the 1950s due to the construction of the Rocky Reach Dam. A highway on the east side of the river was completed in the 1980s and designated as part of US 97 in 1987, leaving the west side to become an alternate route.
context_section_description: The first wagon roads along the Columbia River were built by American settlers in the 1880s and followed earlier routes plotted by indigenous peoples and explorers like George McClellan in the mid-19th century. The west side of the river was once used as an overland route by fur traders in the 1850s and constituted part of the Okanagan Trail and the Cariboo Trail. A wagon road on the west side of the river was added to the state highway system in 1897, connecting Wenatchee to Twisp, and a sum of $15,000 (equivalent to $401,000 in 2018 dollars) was appropriated to Kittitas and Okanogan counties for construction.
  The Wenatchee–Pateros section of the wagon road was assigned in 1905 as part of State Road 10, which continued north along the Okanogan River to the Canadian border. Within the next three years, State Road 10 was improved using state funds, including $20,000 (equivalent to $407,000 in 2018 dollars) allocated to Chelan County for the Wenatchee–Pateros section, particularly the southern stretch through Entiat. By 1915, Chelan County had improved the road surface between Wenatchee and Maple Creek, southwest of the city of Chelan, and the Great Northern Railway had begun negotiations to purchase the highway's right-of-way for a new railroad connecting Wenatchee to Okanogan. The railway company rebuilt the highway, relocating it inland to make way for its railroad, at a cost of $150,000 (equivalent to $2.83 million in 2018 dollars) per an agreement it reached with the state highway commission. State Road 10 was renamed to the Lake Chelan and Okanogan Highway by a legislative act in 1917 and moved to the east side of the river in 1923, ending a decade-long debate on where the highway should run.
  US 97 was created as part of the initial system of numbered national highways in 1926, running from Ashland, Oregon, to the Canadian border near Oroville. The highway was co-signed with State Road 10 from Wenatchee to the border. State Road 10 was relocated to its original alignment on the west side of the Columbia River, which had been improved with oiled macadam surfacing, and was later signed as Primary State Highway 10 (PSH 10) in the 1937 reformation of the state highway system. By the end of the 1930s, the entirety of US 97 and PSH 10 had been paved in concrete and asphalt. A notoriously hilly section of the highway at Maple Creek was replaced by the Knapp's Hill Tunnel, which opened in 1936.
  The development of hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River began in the 1930s and expanded after the end of World War II. The planned reservoir created by the Rocky Reach Dam, located near Orondo, would inundate 20 miles (32 km) of shoreline, including the city of Entiat and sections of PSH 10 and the adjacent Great Northern Railway. Construction of the dam began in 1956 and several contracts were awarded two years later for the uphill relocation of the highway, which began shortly afterward. The new, 18-mile (29 km) section of the highway between the dam and Knapp's Hill was constructed in one year, opening in November 1959 at a cost of $8 million (equivalent to $53.8 million in 2018 dollars), and involved several large cuts in the nearby hills. During the 1964 state highway renumbering, PSH 10 was fully replaced by US 97, while the unfinished highway on the east side of the river between Wenatchee and Chelan Falls became US 2 and SR 151.
  A "water-grade" route for US 97 along the east bank of the Columbia River was envisioned in the 1940s and was constructed in sections as part of improvements to SR 151. These improvements included a new alignment for the highway during construction of the Rocky Reach Dam and a new bridge crossing at Chelan Falls. The $14.6 million alignment (equivalent to $29.5 million in 2018 dollars) following the river for 5.3 miles (8.5 km) between Chelan Falls and Azwell was opened in September 1985, completing the water-grade route along the Columbia River. The state legislature moved US 97 to the east bank route in 1987 and designated the old highway on the west bank as US 97 Alternate. The redesignation was
caption: Aerial view of Lake Entiat, a reservoir created by the Rocky Reach Dam that inundated former sections of US 97
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 30D", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS4 Macintosh", "Image DateTime": "2010:09:01 20:47:09", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "220", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1046", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6694", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/320", "EXIF FNumber": "11", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:09:01 12:19:31", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:09:01 12:19:31", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "272693/32768", "EXIF ApertureValue": "453435/65536", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "-1/3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "28", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3504", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2336", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "920", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "233600/59", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "233600/59", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}