Interstate 5 (I-5) is the main Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, and Seattle's largest and widest freeway. The section shown in this aerial photograph was the part of I-5 built between 1960-1966 to connect Kent to Seattle. The direction of the photograph is looking north and west, with Northgate Mall in the center of the frame.

When it opened at the north end of Seattle on April 21, 1950, Northgate Mall was the first regional shopping center in the United States to be described as a mall, in this instance a double row of stores facing each other across a covered pedestrian walkway, and was the first mall to have public restrooms. Northgate took the national spotlight during the holiday season in 1950 when Life magazine featured the world's record 212-foot Christmas tree put up at the mall. The opening of Interstate 5 spurred a $10 million, 25-store expansion in 1965, more than doubling the mall's size. In 1974 Northgate was enclosed to provide a climate-controlled environment.

John Fraser Vallentyne (1928-2002) was an aerial photographer for The Boeing Co. and a staff photographer for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in the 1950s-1960s.

Caption information source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Seattle_Freeways
Caption information source: "Northgate Beginnings: Jim Douglas Remembers the First Year," Jim Douglas, http://www.historylink.org/File/2289
Caption information source: "John F. Vallentyne, photographer, dies at 74," by D. Parvaz, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 1, 2002