Route information | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Auxiliary route of I-5 | ||||
Maintained by WSDOT | ||||
Length | 22.64 mi[1] (36.44 km) | |||
Existed | 1964–present | |||
Major junctions | ||||
West end | I-5 in Vancouver | |||
East end | SR 14 in Camas | |||
Location | ||||
Country | United States | |||
State | Washington | |||
Counties | Clark | |||
Highway system | ||||
|
State Route 500 (SR 500) is a state highway in Clark County, Washington, United States. The east–west highway runs through Vancouver as an expressway and its eastern suburbs as a country road, connecting Interstate 5 (I-5) to I-205 in eastern Vancouver and SR 14 in Camas. SR 500 runs concurrent to SR 503 within Orchards and also uses a section of the county-built Padden Parkway.
The highway originally followed Fourth Plain Boulevard, a local road built in the 1820s by fur traders and later extended east to Camas in the 1920s. It was added to the state highway system in 1937 as Secondary State Highway 8A (SSH 8A) and widened by the state government in the late 1960s. SSH 8A was replaced by SR 500 in the 1964 state highway renumbering, concurrent with state plans to build a parallel freeway to relieve traffic congestion on Fourth Plain Boulevard.
The state government constructed an expressway for SR 500 in the 1970s and 1980s, including an interchange with I-205 near the new Vancouver Mall. The expressway included several at-grade intersections with traffic signals that led to a high rate of rear-end collisions. The state government began converting these intersections into grade-separated interchanges in the 1990s, with the final right-in/right-out junctions opened in 2018. The eastern section of SR 500 in Orchards on Fourth Plain Boulevard was replaced with the Padden Parkway in 2005.