Left from East Stanwood, State 1-E (today's Pioneer Highway) swings in a southeasterly direction. In the Stanwood PIONEER CEMETERY (R), 7.9 m. are the graves of Zacharias Martin Toftezen, who settled at Oak Harbor on Whidbey Island in 1849, his mother Emmerenze, who came here in 1865, and other early settlers. Honoring them is the NORWEGIAN PIONEER MONUMENT, a rough-hewn, gray-granite slab dedicated by Crown Prince Olav of Norway during his visit to the Northwest in 1939.
-- Washington: A Guide to the Evergreen State, 1950.
When the Writers' Program was initiated US 99 ran on today's Pioneer Highway. Eventually this important route shifted to bypass Stanwood and the Pioneer Cemetery in a direct line from Smokey Point to Conway. Eventually is was superseded by Interstate 5.
When I first bicycled this route in the early 1980s this area had essentially remained unaltered from the Depression. But as the Tacoma-Seattle-Everett area grows in population the pressure is on the Stanwood area to expand. Annexing East Stanwood, today's Stanwood has developed an extensive suburban-style shopping area less than a mile to the north. Meanwhile housing was stretched southwards to touch the north side of the Pioneer Highway.
Behind the Pioneer Cemetery lies the escarpment falling towards the Stilliguamish River Valley which remains untouched farmland. Heading east along old State 1-E quickly skirts down the escarpment to just above flood water levels. It rounds around dairy barns on the right and the farmhouses on the left. On one barn a small yellow warning diamond alerts the observant passerby to the rich Norwegian history of the valley by saying, "Norwegian Crossing".