For thousands of years, the swirling waters in the narrow channels between Whidbey Island and Fidalgo Island have drawn people to this area. Salish Native American tribes were the first human inhabitants of these islands and traveled these waters in cedar canoes on westward journeys to the San Juans to fish. In the late 1700s, the first European explorers to chart the islands mistakenly believed Whidbey and Fidalgo were part of the mainland and took the strong currents between them as evidence of a great river to the east. While exploring the Northwest Passage, Captain George Vancouver recognized the error and named Deception Pass on June 10, 1792. In the 1890s, Whidbey Island residents began urging the state government to finance a bridge to Fidalgo Island, which already had a bridge to the mainland. After decades of broken promises and two vetoes, a bill finally passed, and bridge construction began in August 1934 during the Great Depression. The Wallace Bridge and Structural Company built the two-span bridge for $420,000, with much of the labor performed by local unemployed farmers and Civilian Conservation Corps enrollees, who also blasted approach routes through rock on both sides. Construction took just under 12 months. The bridge was completed on July 25 and dedicated on July 31, 1935. It was delayed by a day when the final section would not fit until an engineer realized that summer heat had expanded the steel; after it cooled at 4 a.m., the last piece was lowered into place. The bridge is 1,487 feet long, with a 511-foot Canoe Pass span and a 976-foot Deception Pass span, a road width of 22 feet, a height of about 180 feet above the water depending on the tides, and daily use by roughly 15,000 cars.