 In May 1995, a major landslide near the Rocky Reach Dam covered a section of the highway with of debris and killed two people.The alternate route was identified in the 1990s as a particularly dangerous highway for single-vehicle collisions, most involving drunk drivers or encounters with deer and elk.WSDOT tallied more than 400 deer killed in collisions with automobiles from 1991 to 1998 and dozens of sheep and elk, prompting plans to install a wildlife fence on US 97A near the Rocky Reach Dam to deter highway crossings.