The concept of a Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway was presented and adopted at a United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) general convention in 1913. The plan envisioned a highway beginning in Virginia on the banks of the Potomac and passing through the southeast into Kentucky, Davis' birthplace. The highway continued to move west through the gulf region ending in California.

Members of the Washington Division UDC wished to extend the highway into Washington as a final link of a nationwide network of roads. The UDC supported a bill introduced into the 1939 Washington state legislature to designate the Pacific Coast Highway as the Jefferson Davis Highway.

Although the bill did not pass, the Department of Highways authorized the UDC to place road markers at the point at which the Pacific Coast Highway from Oregon enters Washington and where the highway met with the Canadian border.

The United Daughters of the Confederacy dedicated the Vancouver marker – Jefferson Davis Highway No. 99 - in June of 1939. The marker was moved from its original location and installed at the present site in 2002.

Jefferson Davis attended West Point, fought in the Black Hawk Indian War and was an American hero in the Mexican War. He served as a U.S. Congressman from Mississippi and was appointed Secretary of War in the cabinet of President Franklin Pierce in 1853. By an act of Congress, February 14, 1853, a military reservation was created in Vancouver on the Columbia River, and was confirmed by Jefferson Davis in an official communication to the commanding General of the Pacific Division of the U.S. Army. While Secretary, he proposed a transcontinental railroad system (through the south) and secured funding for surveys that resulted in the building of roads and railways out west.

He was elected a U.S. Senator in 1857 and resigned in 1861, when Mississippi seceded from the Union to become General of the Mississippi militia. On February 16, 1861, he was inaugurated as the only president of the Confederate States of America.

The Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway was intended to honor his achievements.