The roadway, named First Street in Downtown Cheney, is paralleled by three rail lines, a BNSF Railway route that carries Amtrak's Empire Builder, a Union Pacific route and the Eastern Washington Gateway Railroad.

The Central Washington Highway was established in 1913 and served Cheney via the current route of SR 904.

A bypass of Cheney between Tyler and Four Lakes was planned at the same time as the Interstate Highway System.

After the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry during STS-107 in 2003, killing all seven crewmembers, the road was renamed the Lt. Col. Michael P. Anderson Memorial Highway after the mission's payload commander who was raised in Cheney.

[3] Traveling northeast over an unnamed creek to Babb, the highway becomes parallel with a rail line owned by BNSF Railway and used by Amtrak's Empire Builder route from Portland, Oregon to Spokane.

[2][27] During STS-107, a NASA Space Shuttle mission, Lieutenant colonel Michael P. Anderson, a Cheney native, along with the rest of the Columbia's crew, were killed when it disintegrated during re-entry on February 1, 2003.

SR 904 was posthumously renamed to the Lt. Col. Michael P. Anderson Memorial Highway in his honor later that February.