What to know about the North Cascades Highway — from covered wagons to ‘Top Gun’

Washington State Route 20 marks its 50th anniversary next month, but its journey has carried it more than a century from covered wagons to the Beat Generation and Hollywood blockbusters.

Known as Highway 20 or the North Cascades Highway, it’s the Evergreen State’s longest highway and its most northern Cascades pass, linking east and west over 436 miles from Discovery Bay on the Olympic Peninsula to Newport near the Idaho border.

It began as a wagon route in the 1890s and was originally slated to start in the Whatcom County village of Glacier on the Mount Baker Highway, according to HistoryLink.org, the website of the Washington State Historical Society.

Several miles of the road — from west of Newhalem to east of Diablo — loops through Whatcom County.

Construction of the modern highway began in 1959 and it opened Sept. 2, 1972.

Because of avalanche danger, Highway 20 closes annually over the pass between Diablo and Winthrop in November or December, and opens again in April or May.

Spring opening ceremonies were the focus of much fanfare for many years, including a nearby resident who brought cinnamon rolls and coffee, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation.

Breathtaking scenery across the North Cascades has captured the imagination of writers and filmmakers, according to the website CascadeLoop.com.

▪ Scenes from the new “Top Gun” were filmed in the North Cascades using jets from Whidbey Island Naval Air Station.

▪ The NORAD base in “War Games” was actually a Newhalem gravel pit.

▪ Beat writer Jack Kerouac traveled SR 20 when he was a fire lookout at Desolation Peak in Whatcom County, an experience he described in “Desolation Angels.”

▪ Jennifer Bradbury, a former English teacher at Burlington-Edison High School, wrote about a teen’s disappearance in her young adult mystery novel “Shift.”