Interstate 5 - Route Description - Washington

Washington

The highway begins in Washington over the Columbia River and drops down into the city of Vancouver. About seven miles (11 km) into the state, it reaches the northern terminus of I-205, which is on the eastern edge of the Portland-Vancouver metropolitan area. It then tracks north by northwest to Kelso and Longview, at which point it ceases paralleling a large bend of the Columbia. Continuing north through the Willapa Hills, the freeway eventually reaches Olympia, where it bends sharply east, after that it goes through Joint Base Lewis-McChord (formerly Fort Lewis and McChord AFB), then finally Tacoma where it bends sharply north again to reach Seattle. The Ship Canal Bridge carries it over Portage Bay in Seattle. The freeway makes its way out of the Seattle/Tacoma/Everett metro area, crosses the floodplains of three rivers, through the Skagit Valley and the Mount Vernon-Burlington Metropolitan Area to the northern city of Bellingham to arrive at the Peace Arch Canadian border crossing between Blaine, Washington, and Surrey, British Columbia. Highway 99 continues northwest from the border into Vancouver, B.C. I-5 covers 277 miles (446 km) in Washington.