State Route 7 is a state highway in Lewis and Pierce counties, located in the U.S. state of Washington. The long roadway begins at in Morton and continues north to intersect several other state highways to Tacoma, where it ends at an interchange with and. The road has several names, such as Second Street in Morton, the Mountain Highway in rural areas, Pacific Avenue in Spanaway, Parkland and Tacoma and 38th Street in Tacoma. Near the end of the highway there is a short freeway that has been proposed to be extended south parallel to an already existing railroad, owned by Tacoma Rail, which serves as the median of the short freeway. The earliest road to use the current route of SR 7 first appeared in a 1900 map of the Tacoma area and has been part of the state highway system since 1909, when the Alder-Kosmos Road was added to the system as. State Road 18 became part of two branches of in 1923 and later branches of. During the 1964 highway renumbering, the branches became SR 7. In 2002, an auxiliary route that bypasses Tacoma,, was established and construction started in 2008 to connect I-5, Fort Lewis, McChord Air Force Base and SR 7.
Route description
State Route 7 begins at an intersection with , a major east–west highway, in Morton. Traveling north as Second Street and paralleling the Morton – Tacoma route of Tacoma Rail, the street intersects Main Avenue, which continues west out of the city as. After leaving Morton, the highway becomes the Mountain Highway and passes through a heavily forested canyon near Mount Rainier and parallel to the Tilton River and Roundrop Creek. Bridging the Nisqually River, the highway leaves Lewis County and enters Pierce County. In Elbe, the roadway intersects, which goes east to Mount Rainier National Park. Following the Nisqually River, which has become Alder Lake, and Tacoma Rail line, branches off towards Eatonville and travels west from the plains to McKenna. Passing Elk Plain and suburban areas, the highway enters Spanaway near the Fort Lewis boundary where SR 7 intersects, which continues southwest to Chehalis. The Mountain Highway becomes Pacific Avenue and enters Parkland. Shortly after 112th Street, the roadway has a partial cloverleaf interchange with, which uses 108th Street South as two ramps. Leaving Parkland and entering Tacoma, Pacific Avenue turns east as 38th Street and then has another partial cloverleaf interchange with a short freeway and the proposed route of SR 7, which is used by the roadway. The freeway was the busiest segment of the highway in 2007, with an estimated daily average of 27,000 motorists. The median of the freeway is the Tacoma Rail route and at the northern terminus is an interchange with . SR 7 ends at the interchange, located near the Tacoma Dome, but continues north parallel to the railroad to a single-point urban interchange with as.
History
A 1900 map of the Tacoma area showed a roadway extending north from Spanaway to Tacoma that would later become SR 7. In 1909, the Alder-Kosmos Road, numbered, was added to the state highway system and ran from Kosmos north through Morton and Elbe to Alder. The National Park Highway was created in 1913 and extended from the Pacific Ocean to Tacoma and south to Elbe, where it turned east into Mount Rainier National Park. Both highways were replaced by two branches of in 1923, which traveled from Tacoma to Mount Rainier and Elbe to Chehalis. State Road 5 became during the creation of the Primary state highways in 1937 and the Tacoma–Mount Rainier branch remained the same, but the Elbe–Chehalis branch was shortened to Kosmos. The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad started to parallel the route by 1951 between Tacoma and Morton. During the 1964 highway renumbering the two branches of PSH 5 became SR 7. Between 1968 and 2008, the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad transferred the railroad parallel to the highway to Tacoma Rail. In 2002, a new auxiliary route of SR 7, was established to provide a bypass of Tacoma to provide direct connections between , Fort Lewis, McChord Air Force Base and SR 7 in Spanaway. On July 30, 2008, the Washington State Department of Transportation had a groundbreaking ceremony to start construction of SR 704, which has been predicted to be finished after 2017. The segment of the highway between in Spanaway to in Parkland had a very high accident rate, so WSDOT added safety improvements to the roadway in 2007. Between Morton and Spanaway, WSDOT is currently developing a route development plan to improve the roadway. The project is divided into three phases, the first phase was completed in 2006 and focused between Morton and Elbe and the second phase will be focused between Elbe and while the third will focus between SR 702 to Spanaway. A small plane made an emergency landing on a section of SR 7 in Parkland on August 1, 2019, following a fuel system malfunction. The incident was captured on the dashcam of a state trooper.
