It carries State Route 99 (Aurora Avenue North) over the west end of Seattle's Lake Union and connects Queen Anne and Fremont.

[3] The bridge was opened to traffic on February 22, 1932, the 200th anniversary of the birth of its namesake, George Washington, a Founding Father and first president of the United States.

[5] A time capsule was installed on the bridge by the widow of Judge Thomas Burke and is planned to be opened in 2032.

In 1930 Seattle City Council voted to build connecting portions of the highway through the Woodland Park Zoo, a decision which generated considerable controversy at the time.

[10] In 1990 the Fremont Troll—a large concrete sculpture of a troll clutching a real-life Volkswagen Beetle—was installed under the bridge's north end.

[11] Up to half of the $40,000 cost for the artwork was donated from Seattle's Neighborhood Matching Fund, a local program to raise money for community projects.

[11][12][13] The Troll was heavily vandalized in the year following its construction, and large floodlights were installed on the bridge to discourage further damage.

[17] The George Washington Memorial Bridge underwent extensive seismic retrofitting in 2011 and 2012 at a cost of $5.7 million.

[18] During a regular inspection in October 2019, WSDOT structural engineers determined that an outside stringer beam on the southbound side of the bridge had corroded to the point of creating a visible sag in the roadway.

[22][23] Cool then shot himself as the bus veered across two lanes of traffic and plunged off the bridge's eastern side onto the roof of an apartment building below.

[27] Numerous state and county officials and over 100 transit drivers attended the service, which included a procession of over eighty Metro buses and vans.

One witness reported that it appeared as though the duck boat veered into the oncoming bus, after crossing the center line.

[31][32][33] Some blame for the collision was placed on the narrowness of the 57-foot-wide (17 m) bridge deck, which has 9.5-foot-wide (2.9 m) lanes, and the lack of a median barrier to separate the two directions of traffic.

[48] In 2007, Washington Governor Christine Gregoire allocated $1.4 million in her supplemental budget for the construction of an 8-foot-high (2.4 m) suicide-prevention fence to help reduce the number of suicides on the bridge.