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Back about 1980, I took a flight from the Washington, DC, Metro area to Denver. My recollection is that we took off from BWI, stopped at Dulles, and continued on via Des Moines. But BWI to Dulles is nearer 60 miles, I think.

In that era, many airlines were still operating much as they had in the regulated era - without a fully developed hub-and-spoke system. So service to a lot of smaller airports wasn't directly back to a hub; you got on at some point in a series of stops and they did very brief layovers to take on or debark passengers.

In a decade there will be a light rail that is even faster than the shuttle! (Between Everett and SeaTac or the city)

It looks like Alaska will sell you tickets for PAE to SEA via any one of SFO, LAS, LAX, PHX...

Yes, it's a popular 'mileage-run' route. Aka a flight routing that frequent flyers take solely for the purposes of gaining more miles/status