The Washington State Department of Highways was officially created by legislature in 1905. As early as 1893 legislature designated a state highway to be built from Nooksack River in Whatcom County to the Columbia River at Marcus. In 1895 a connection road was built to an existing road near Marblemount in Skagit County. With the end of World War I, the allocation of federal aid funds for highway construction encouraged the state highway department to undertake its largest construction program at the time. Much of the money probably came from the PWA especially the Lake Washington Bridge Project and the Everett Marysville bridges. The bridges pictured in this collection are an indication of the State of Washington’s ambitious construction program of the 1920s. Division of authority between a state highway engineer and a non-technical state highway commission was not satisfactory as administration of the state highway operations was under the nominal supervision of the Director of Public Works. The Laws of 1923 abolished this division of highways. A state highway engineer was appointed by the governor. From 1925 to 1927, J. W. Hoover was appointed State Highway engineer, Charles E. Andrew was Bridge Engineer and James Allen was Supervisor of Highways. Charles Andrew was affiliated with several state highway departments: California, Oregon and Washington. Perhaps his greatest bridge project was the largest floating structure in the world in his time – the Lake Washington Floating Bridge opened in 1940. Currently the Washington State Department of Transportation operates and maintains 18,000 miles of state highways and owns and operates more than 3,600 bridge structures.