U.S. Route 97 Alternate
highway in Washington
U.S. Route 97 Alternate (US 97 Alt., also abbreviated as US 97A) is an alternate route of US 97 within the state of Washington. It runs for 40 miles (64 km) 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 (later the Lake Chelan and Okanogan Highway) 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.
Route description
US 97A begins north of Wenatchee at a partial cloverleaf interchange with US 2 and US 97 at the west end of the Richard Odabashian Bridge. US 2 and US 97 travel concurrently through the area on an east–west divided highway, while the roadway itself continues south towards Wenatchee Confluence State Park as Euclid Avenue. US 97A travels north alongside the Cascade and Columbia River Railroad on the west bank of the Columbia River, passing through an industrial area and intersecting Ohme Garden Road at a roundabout.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “U.S. Route 97 Alternate” is highway in Washington. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Route, Alternate and highway, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q59587347. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1897, 1926 and 1987.
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This entry incorporates text from “U.S. Route 97 Alternate” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.