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Composed of two separate spans, one a steel arch truss span covering the 511-foot Canoe Pass on the north and the cantilevered arch span over the 976-foot Deception Pass on the south, the Deception Pass Bridge was meant to facilitate economic development in Island, Skagit, and Whatcom Counties. Efforts to construct a bridge dated back to 1907, when a local state legislator, Maine-born mariner George Washington Morse (1830-1915) of Oak Harbor, introduced a $20,000 appropriations bill to study bridge possibilities. This effort resulted in plans for a through-truss bridge, a model of which was displayed at Seattle's Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909. Money, however, could not be found to erect it, until the 1930s. In the intervening period, farming began to expand on Whidbey Island and in the Skagit Valley, necessitating transportation routes to bring produce to new urban markets. Other economic forces produced changes in the area's economy. Between 1910-1914, the State of Washington opened its Fidalgo Island State Prison Camp, manned by 40 workers transferred from the Walla Walla Penitentiary, to produce stone for Seattle-area construction efforts. The US Army during World War I also began operations on a 1,000-acre tract near to the bridge, first ceded to the government in 1866. (The Army transferred this acreage to the State of Washington to comprise part of Deception Pass State Park in 1923.) During the Depression, the Federal Government began freeing money for public works projects across the country to create needed jobs through its formation of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA) in 1933. Officials of Island County, Skagit County, the State of Washington Department of Highways, and the New Deal agencies, FERA and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), collaborated with a local group, the Deception Pass Bridge Association, to erect the Deception Pass Bridge, beginning in 08/1934 and finishing on 07/31/1935. O. R. Elwell of the Department of Highways was the Chief Engineer for the bridge; the Puget Construction Company completed concrete pouring and steelwork and cooperated with CCC workers (housed nearby at Camp #266) who created the road beds approaching the spans. Seattle's Wallace Bridge and Structural Company produced the 1590 tons of steel needed to create the bridges' 1487-foot total length. Surrounding counties, the FERA and other federal agencies bore the bridge's $482,000 cost. Like other high and majestic bridges, such as San Francisco's Golden Gate, the Deception Pass Bridge has been something of a magnet for suicides and suicidal attempts; approximately 31 occurred here between 1995-2005.

The two-part Deception Pass Bridge has spanned particularly dangerous waters connecting the Strait of Juan de Fuca with the Saratoga Passage since 1935. According to historian Paul Hadlow, the State of Washington built another bridge with a nearly identical structure to the Deception Pass span in 1934-1935 over the Snake River at the site of the Grand Coullee Dam. The State of Washington Department of Highways administered the Deception Pass Bridge until 1977, when the agency's name was changed to the Washington State Department of Transportation. The bridge was added to the Historic American Building Survey/Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) in 1982, administered by the National Park Service. It was part of a multiple property submission (MPS) called the "Historic Bridges/Tunnels in Washington State Thematic Resource (TR)."

State officials had the Deception Pass Bridge's two spans repainted in 1982 and 1997.