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Introduces the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks and Lake Washington Ship Canal as a major Seattle story. Explains the glacial geology that shaped the route and made the canal possible.
The story of the Hyram M.Chittenden locks and Lake Washington ship canal is one of the longest and most fascinating chapters in Seattle history.It's a story that starts with a canoe route followed by Native Americans for thousands of years and then by European settlers who literally moved mountains and bent rivers in order to build a great city.It's a story with unique characters from a teenager who set out to dig a canal all by himself to a Renaissance man who finally finished the job as the capstone to a distinguished career in the US Army Corpsof Engineers.It's the story of the busiest locks in the United States and one of the most popular destinations for visitors to the Pacific Northwest.This is a story well worth telling in 2017, a 100red years after Seattle proudly opened its brand new waterway to the world.
When you look back at the geologic history of this area, you can see that geology is central to the story of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, which in essence is following what was shaped from the last ice agewhen a 3,000 ft thick mass of ice plows south through the area and then eventually retreats.And in doing so, it does several things.One is that ice as it moves through the landscape, you have the deposition of three layers of material.a layer of clay, a layer of sand, and a layer of till, which is the sort of heterogeneous mix of silt and cobble.Cut into any hill in Seattle, you have this very soft sediment.So, it's relatively easy to alter the landscape of Seattle to create the features that we need.The second aspect of the glacial story is as that ice moves through the area, water flowing underneath the ice carves into the sediments and creates Puget Sound and Lake Washington.
And at one point, the lake and the sound were connected.So the route that the canal follows in essence is really just reconnecting the sound and Lake Washington.
Describes the pre-settlement landscape, Native food systems, and the long history of canoe travel through the area. Shows how the ship canal follows an ancient transportation corridor.
200 years ago, the piece of sound was a lot different than it is today.There were much larger ancient trees here.Glaciers and uh snow packs were hardy.We had cleaner water, much cleaner water, much more stronger river and stream flows.And uh there was a lot more wildlife here.The tribes were very well adapted to this environment.were able to gather and store large quantities of salmon and clams and berries and deer and all the foods that they needed.And they also had quite a bit of access to medicinal plants and also materials for building homes and making clothing and for their use in their technology, their fishing nets and their canoe paddles and all those great thingsthat they needed to adapt and survive in the in the P sound.There was a very unique and complex ecosystem at Salmon Bay before it was transformed and altered by the Chittenden locks.
It was a unique place for winter villages and for people to live.Salmon Bay was such a productive environment that people returned to that area seasonally year after year to hunt and to fish and to collect shellfish.And we know from archaeological sites in the area that there were villages there.There were a group of people called the Shilshaw that lived there.And Salmon Bay Charlie was probably one of the last Indian people that were living in that area.There were a number of co-ish groups that used the area that we know of as the ship canal for moving people and goods between freshwater and saltwater.It's a cleft in the hills that would be an obvious route.There's two small strips of land that are blocking the way, but if you're using canoes, it's easy to portage over those areas or to have other canoes waiting for you um stored on either side of the portages.
You would see Lake Washington on the inland side as having a wealth of resources.You can go there to fish.You can go there to get cattail that you need to create mats or to weave into baskets.But then there's also the social aspect of it where they want to maybe visit relatives that live up in the snowami river.So you would have people traveling um via the area we know as the ship canal in order to go to different places around the region.And if you think about it, the ship canal today is just a new iteration of something that's been happening for thousands of years.
Covers the arrival of non-native settlers and their ambition to build Seattle around natural resources. Then traces early canal ideas in the broader history of American canal building.
In the 1850s, you have the first non-native settlers coming to the region and they come by boat because there are no overland roads and there's no railroad yet.The reason that Seattle was an obvious choice to build a city is that it has a deep water port and then also the surrounding land had forests and most likely mines and then fish in the bay of coursethat could be sold along the coast.They came to Seattle to build a community but also to build a city that was based on these natural resources.Ever since the 1850s, the vision has been for a large city, not just a way station along the way.And so in order to do that, you see a willingness throughout our history to do whatever is necessary in order to set the stage for that growth.And so we leveled hills, we filled marshlands, we straightened a river, we built the ship canal.
Um it just goes on and on what city leaders were willing to do in order to create space for a city.
Canals have been something people have thought of in the United States since well before it was the United States.In fact, the earliest proposal that we know of for a canal in the US was Miles Standish who proposed to cut a short canal through Cape Cod that would allow better transport between Boston and points to the south.That only took 291 years to build.So if you think about the fact that ours took 63 years to build, you know, we shouldn't really complain.In 1825, the Great Canal opens.The Eerie Canal opens 360 plus miles going deep into the area of New York.And that was really the change with that opening and people seeing the ability to move goods and move people along this corridor.Within a decade of the opening of the Erie Canal, something like 2500 miles of additional canals are open in the United States.
And certainly the early settlers who came here knew about these canals probably were influenced by them.They had to have been.
Tells the story of the 1854 Fourth of July picnic where Thomas Mercer proposed naming Lake Washington and Lake Union. His speech framed the idea of an inland waterway as a future engine of city growth.
The idea of the Lake Washington ship canal really starts on July 4th of 1854.In 1854, Seattle was only 2 years old and really just a village in an area we now call Pioneer Square.We had a few houses and shops, sawmills and warves, and were busy chopping down trees to help build another much larger city down the coast called San Francisco.It was definitely a humble start, but the settlers had big ideas for the future.There were two pioneers in particular who did more than just dream.Their names are Thomas Mercer and Harvey Pike.In the early summer of that year, the settlers took the day off from sawing and hauling and walked about a mile through the woods to a lake known by the Indian name Tennis Chuck, meaning little water.It was July 4th and they wanted to celebrate Independence Day with the picnic, of course.
There are no photographs of the picnic, but we can imagine what it was like from paintings of that era.The settlers had endured two long and rainy winters of hard work, so we can easily picture them cutting loose with a lot of food, games, and maybe some dancing.
The patriotic spirits were running especially high because this was the first Independence Day since Washington had won its own independence from Oregon and become its own territory of the United States.In this spirit, the man who was hosting the picnic, Thomas Mercer, got up to make a speech.My friends, as we gather on this Independence Day, we remember Mercer today from a street name and a photograph taken in his later years when he was a judge and sported a highly impressive beard.Mercer grew up in Ohio in Illinois and seems to have been a born leader.At the age of 14, he was managing his father's woolen mill.In 1852, he headed west on the Oregon Trail with his family.He was elected a wagon master for the 14 wagons for their fivemonth 2,000mi journey.After a brief stay in Salem, Oregon, he headed to Seattle where he homesteaded land north of the village.
In addition to farming, he became the first local teamster, hauling cargo to and from the warves with the horses and wagon he had brought from Illinois.Mercer had only settled in the area about a year when he made his speech, but he already was a King County Commissioner.Now, the village had no mayor, so a King County Commissioner was the highest local elected official.We know roughly what he said in his speech from a letter he wrote many years later.Beyond these hills to the east lies a lake called by the Indian name of Highest Chuck.Being the greatest lake in Washington territory, I propose that we christen it Lake Washington.here.Here the main thing he did was propose new names for Seattle's two major lakes.He suggested the largest one which locals called highest chuck or big water be named in honor of Washington George and the new territory for tennis chuck the smaller lake where the picnic was happening.
The name he proposed was Lake Union because of our determination that it will be the union of a he chose his name because as he wrote in his letter sometime it would be a connection between Lake Washington andthe bay.Now these words may be vague but behind them lies a huge idea an inland waterway allowing Seattle to move ships and cargo easily between the interior and the rest of the world.As I gaze on these waters, I foresee their shores crowded with ship's masts and smoking chimneys.Harbingers of prosperity ahead for the great city of Seattle.Here, here.Three cheers.Hip hip hip hip hazip.
Explores Harvey Pike as the first person to physically attempt the canal and the local coal economy that motivated the idea. Explains why his effort failed but still helped launch the project.
We don't know exactly what influenced Mercer.We know that he was someone who transported goods around the Seattle area.So suspect he may have been influenced by seeing the native people who were still moving through this landscape at the time.So he must have seen how they transported goods.There's also a little mystical aspect that supposedly he had some sort of dream of seeing some body of water that he lived on and people bringing large boats up to him.So Mercer is sort of the father of the idea of the canal.And if Thomas Mercer is the father, then maybe Harvey Pike is the son of the story.He's the one who is considered to be the first to start to attempt to follow Mercer's idea.Harvey Pike was the son of John Pike, whose name is remembered today in a street, a public market, and a well-known blend of coffee.
John Pike came west in 1852 in the wagon train led by Thomas Mercer.He was an architect and a carpenter and built much of early Seattle, including our first university building at what is now 4th Avenue and University Street.As a teenager, his son Harvey earned money by painting that building as well as sign boards for probably most of Seattle's early storefronts.In 1861, he cleared some land for the university and instead of taking cash for his work, he took land, 161 acres on the Mont Lake Ismas.He was only 19 years old, but he was wise enough to realize that this narrow strip of marshy bottomland had value.As long as anyone could remember, this is where the Native Americans and everyone else had to pick up their canoes and cargo and carry them between highest and tennis jucks.Hence the name we call Eastern Lake Union Portage Bay.
Soon after he acquired the land, Harvey Pike did something quite remarkable.It took a lot of different hands to build the canal.And the first hands were those of Harvey Pike.He had a shovel, good shovel, a wheelbarrow, and a and a pickaxe.He started to actually dig a canal between the two lakes.However, he didn't know much about the deep ecology around here, which was that you had glacial till.You went down through the the top soil a little ways and you got glacial till.and that was harder to break into, so he gave up on it.Harvey Pike did succeed in digging his way into local folklore, where he is often portrayed as a cross between a visionary and a colorful crackpot.If we look a little closer, we may discover that Harvey Pike was no fool.This 1864 article in the Seattle Gazette sheds light on what he may have been planning.
The Seattle Gazette describes discoveries of coal on the east side of Lake Washington, areas we now know as Coal Creek, Black Diamond, Newcastle.These were the best coal deposits on the West Coast.But getting them to Seattle's coal bunkers required an arduous journey through the shallows of the Black and White Rivers to the Dwamish River and across Elliot Bay.The newspaper calls this route an insufficient outlet for the immense wealth of the country.It proposes a better and shorter route through lakes Washington and Union.Of course, this would require digging a canal at Mont Lake, but the article suggests this might not be as difficult as it sounds.Lake Washington was several feet higher than Lake Union.The author writes, "So, a mere ditch through which to turn the water is all that is required, and the canal will make itself."He was suggesting that once the fog gates were open, gravity and water pressure would do most of the work.
Was this the vision of Harvey Pike when he started digging?It seems pretty likely, but there's no doubt he eventually realized that even creating a mere ditch between the lakes was a herculean undertaking for just one man.Harvey Pike is certainly an example of being willing to try just about anything in order to get raw materials to market.You know, if there is a way to make money off of something, people um at that time particularly thought, "What the heck?Why not try?"And I think that's what he did.When I think about Harvey Pike, I think he's just a guy who had this great ambition and this dream that many 1920 year olds have and he set out to do it.He didn't accomplish it, but he started it and that really did launch us on the route of the canal.And so for that, we can thank him.
This this dream he had as well as Thomas Mercers.
Describes later efforts to move coal through the lakes and the repeated frustration of lacking a canal. Covers the 1880s improvement company, Chinese labor, and the violent anti-Chinese expulsion.
Of course, it was not hard to imagine why a canal would be good because there was a lot of really good coal on the east side of Lake Washington.But to get the coal from the east side, they had to bring it on a primitive rail system down to the east shores of Lake Washington, then bring it across the lake to Mont Lake.There was no canal there then, of course.So they hired the pioneers to drag these containers full of coal over the Mont Lake Ismas to new scows on Lake Union.And then they had a little steamer to putt putt them to the south end of Lake Union.And there they got on Seattle's first railroad, which was that little coal and narrow gauge coal railroad that went up West Lake to the Pike Warf.From there, the coal went everywhere.But it really was a huge job to get the coal there.
So, how nice it would have been had there been a canal, but there wasn't.So, never did the idea leave their minds.In the 1870s, the military looks at Seattle as a place to open up this canal for military purposes.They decide not to do it because Seattle's too small.So another decade or so passes in the 1880s.David Denny, Thomas Burke, and others form what's known as the Lake Washington Improvement Company to build cuts between Lake Washington and Lake Union, Lake Union and Salmon Bay, big enough for some logs because David Denny had a millin Lake Union.They hire a company run by a man named JJ Cummings.And one of the interesting things about Cummings is he says explicitly in his contract is that he will not hire any Chinese.In the 1880s in Seattle and through much of the West Coast, there was this very horrible racism against Chinese.
And so he was, you know, clearly getting out in front of the anti-Chinese movement.Cummings starts work on the project, cutting a a route from Lake Union to Lake Washington.And after a month or two, Cummings runs into a much harder soil than he expected.They found, as any gardener in Seattle often finds, that as soon as you dig a little bit, you hit the hard pan and it's impossible to dig.It is like rock.And so Cummings tried to get more money in order to justify the harder work and the longer time that it would take.and the Lake Washington improvement company did not want to pay that and they had an alternative.They could reach out to labor contractors in um Pioneer Square.One of the prominent ones was the Wong company which was started by Chongqing Hawk.Chinese immigrants were willing to work very very hard for not very much money because they did not have a lot of choices.
So the first successful connection made between the lakes and the sound was completed by the Chinese laborers.But just as they're finishing that work in the fall of 1885, you have anti-Chinese movements gaining steam and a number of the white residents of the city did not want Chinese people to be here.It was very violent.They forced them out to a dock and told them they had to leave.And it's ironic that just as the city is growing and just as we need them for projects like the ship canal, we're forcing them out of the city.
Explains the first small ditch and lock at Portage Bay, then the long debate over the canal route. Ends with the Klondike gold rush, which made the project seem economically worthwhile.
The first canal was actually just a ditch.They called it the Mont Lake ditch.And it was just big enough to move logs and um some small boats.And to control the water movement between the lakes, they built a very small basic wooden lock structure at the shore of Portage Bay.They were Seattle's first walks.By 1891, it was apparent that Seattle wanted to build this much more substantial canal.But the trick was is where and how to build it.And they identified five routes.One was via the Dwamish River.One was via the Cole Railroad route that connected to Pike Street.The third would have carried the canal to the southwest of Lake Union.the Scholshaw route which is through Lake Union and out to Puget Sound via Shaw Bay and then the Smith Cove route which would have turned south through what we know as the inner bay area to Smith Cove on
Elliot Bay.So for several years they were arguing about which was the best route.In the 1880s and 1890s, there was this ongoing debate about where exactly to build the canal, how to fund it, what was going to be the driver behind it.And then in 1889, 1890, a man named Eugene Simple arrives in Seattle.He's the former territorial governor of Washington, and he has a very simple idea to complete the canal.He's going to connect Lake Washington directly with Elliot Bay through Beacon Hill.It was going to be maybe a quarter mile wide at the top, 300 ft deep because that's how tall Beacon Hill is.And they were going to build it by using what were known as hydraulic giants, massive water guns that would allow them to blast away the hillside.The other part of Simple's plan was to fill the tide lands south of King Street and the Pioneer Square area.
Thousands of acres of tide flats that couldn't be used for industry to develop until they had a seaw wall and were filled.So his opponents questioned if he ever intended to build that canal that his canal scheme was really a dirt getting scheme to get enough dirt to fill those tide lands.Simple has great support at the beginning, but unfortunately it was not a good idea.If you think about cutting a canal through Beacon Hill, a quarter mile wide, how would you get across it?How would you really protect it from a landslide point of view?So he starts work on it, works on it for about a year and a half or so, washing away the hillside until the powers that be the convinced the city council to cut off the water that Simple wasusing to blast away the hill.When the water was cut off, he had no source to feed his hydraulic cannons and the project dies.
Simple really was like Harvey Pike, these people who came to Seattle with this vision of making something happen.They fail, but they still it gave a spirit to the place and a spirit to the idea that propelled on further people.And you can still see to this day exactly where Simple was going to build his canal.It's that spot where if you're going from Beacon Hill down south Colombian Way, that is where Simple's canal was going to go.So we still have a little bit of evidence of this dream of simples.One of the arguments against building the ship canal in the 1890s is that Seattle was not big enough.But then in 1897 when the Klondike gold rush started, that changed everything.The city's population grew from about 43,000 in 1890 to about 237,000 in 1910.and the connections to Alaska and the trade that that brought to the city just made it so much more likely that the expense of building a ship canal would be justified and that's when Hyram Chittenden came to Seattle.
Introduces the Army Corps of Engineers and Hiram Chittenden’s background as an engineer and historian. Shows how he unified the city around one lock system and secured federal funding.
The Army Corps of Engineers when when you think of this canal, think of their history too because especially after the 1812 war with England, the nation became a little bit frightened, you know, that they have the White Housecould be burned down again.So they started to invest more money in protecting the shorelines, building lighouses, improving waterways, and that was an important predecessor to the building of the Lake Washington ship canal.The core of engineers goes all the way back to General George Washington.At the time he was formulating his continental army, he decided it was important to have an engineer along.I guess for obvious reasons of scoping out military roads and developing ways of of crossing water.And then throughout the following decades, the core developed in response to westward expansion as the interior parts of the country were settled.There was a lot of products that needed to be shipped from the interior to the east coast and obviously rivers were the best way of doing that.
So the core was asked to play a role in navigation to keep those waterways open, doing river maintenance, snag removal, dredging, dam building, some levy construction and flood risk management.So that's how the core ended up having a big role in the Pacific Northwest and creating its signature project here at the Chittenden locks.Hyram Chittenden was a pivotal figure in the history of the core of engineers and one of less than a handful of the most important engineers that shaped the core from east to west.Hyram Martin Chittenden is a really interesting individual.He graduated from the military academy in the class of 1884 and he had numerous military assignments throughout his life.He was also historian and his literary and historical works were really tied to his engineering works.All of his army assignments led to the publication of either a book or some article about the specific region where he was working.
His first stent from 1891 to 1893 was in Yellowstone.He published a book in 1895 on Yellowstone National Park, which is a definitive work.He had another military tour in St.Louis and he ended up writing a book on the history of fur trading in the American West, which is another definitive three volume set.Chinden really sort of was a Renaissance man.I mean, he was this guy who had this bigger picture of the world.and he arrives in Seattle in 1906 at a time when we're still trying to figure out where exactly to put the canal, what sort of canal it would be, how we're going to fund it, and he brings thecity together.He rallies people around to support the idea of the North Canal.The big challenge of the idea of the canal is that Lake Washington was 9 ft higher than Lake Union.
And so you had two choices.You either build two set of locks.One lock that would bring boats up to the level of Lake Union, which is a little bit above sea level, and then another that would bring boats up to the level of Lake Washington.Chitten says, "No, we need one set of locks.And what we need to do is make Salmon Bay, Lake Union, and Lake Washington at the same elevation."And in fact, people had been wanting to lower Lake Washington for 50, 60 years because Lake Washington by flowing out through the Black River led to flooding in the Dwamish River Valley.If you could stop Lake Washington going into the Dwamish, you wouldn't have flooding there.And so he solves a second part of the equation.And in addition, the other big thing is he gets federal funding.Never before had the government agreed to pay for the project.
And there's no way that just the local entities could build it.They needed outside money.They needed the federal government to fund it.And that's what Chittton brings is the design and the funding and the unity of the city.
Covers the start of construction in 1909, including the Fremont cut and the lock site. Also explains James Kavanagh’s role in carrying the project through to completion.
work on the modern canal really starts in October of 1909 when they start to build a better connection between Lake Union and Lake Washington.And it started just after the end of the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition, Seattle's first World Fair.So it was sort of the next great event in Seattle history.At the west end of what we think of as the Mont Lake cut, they build a coffer dam or temporary dam.And at the east end, there's a series of gates.The contractor for this is the Stillwell Company.
December 31st, 1913.They blow up the coffer dam and allow Lake Union to flow into the cut.One of the fascinating things is the UW crew immediately starts to row their boats in the cut, like within days of it.But there's one problem.The south side of the canal is slumping.So they build a second temporary dam, drain the water, fix the south side, they allow water to flow in again.It's fine except the north side's slumping.Not until 1916 do we get it built right.What's so wonderful is we have these amazing photos of the blasting out of the final coffer dam, the third one at this site.And what it shows is all these people on this temporary structure that's going to fail.And why they even allowed people there is sort of beyond anything that modern safety engineers would ever consider.It must have been an amazing feeling because Seattleites have been talking about this project since 1854 and finally it was going to be complete.
That flow of water from Lake Union into the Mont Lake Cut represented the future of Seattle.
Meanwhile, the same time all of this is going on, we then have to have the excavation of the Fremont cut that starts in 1911 and around the same time, work begins on the locks.And the first thing they do is build a coffer or temporary dam around the site.They pump all the water out of it.So now you have this big pit.They then build a train route down the center of it so they can move goods.They also have a series of overhead cranes that allow goods to be moved.So that's the first part of the project.They then start pouring the concrete and over the next 2 or 3 years they pour the concrete for the large block and the small block next to it.The forgotten engineer in all of this is James Kavanagh who takes over the job from Chittenden.
Chittenden retires in 1909 for health reasons and Kavanaaugh in 1911 takes over.He like Chittenden had been a West Point graduate.Uh he actually graduated first in his class and he pushes it all through.He's the one who's you see his name on all of the paperwork.Chittenden's the designer, the funer.Kavanaaugh was the builder.The main sort of link to Kavanaaugh right now is the house on the property that's named for him.He really was the guy who made it work from the Army Corps of Engineers point of view.
Describes the huge labor effort, concrete work, and dredging that reshaped Seattle’s waterways. Then recounts the dramatic 1916–1917 opening, including the lowering of Lake Washington and the grand dedication.
The construction of the locks was a massive undertaking because the core was already uh building the Panama Canal and the lock systems there.So they took on this other big project about at the same time and it was a massive undertaking.There were about 300 men working right here at the locks.All the cement was mixed right here at the locks of 15 men had to man the big cement mixers and there were rail lines that went down hauling the material back and forth into the locks and so forth.And then at the same time this was going on uh the core was supervising the dredging of the canal itself.And that included, of course, digging the Fremont and M Lake cuts.They had massive steam shovels and water cannons and they were blasting through the earth and removed overall with the whole project somewhere around 4 million cubic yards of dirt.
The building of the canal itself has really changed the whole landscape of the Seattle area and the region itself because it has allowed for Salmon Bay, which was once just a big mud flat, a saltwater inlet, to befilled with fresh water to the level of Lake Union.And that created this big freshwater harbor around which industry today is located.And then in connecting Lake Union and Lake Washington together, Lake Washington was lowered about 9 ft which changed the whole drainage pattern of that large watershed so that all that water comes through the locks rather than flowing tothe Dwamish River which was the original outflow of Lake Washington.So the whole landscape has been altered because of the building of the canal.
Beginning in August 1916 when the Mont Lake cut is breached, Lake Washington begins to lower.That set off a whole chain of events because by doing that they were transforming the entire shoreline of the lake.First, as the lake was lowered, acres and acres of wetlands drained and became dry land.But the biggest change was that it was lowered below the outlet of the Black River.The Black River connected Lake Washington with the Dwarmish River and the entire river dried up.Today, there's one little remnant left.At the time it was catastrophic for the Dwamish tribe members who lived along the river still for thousands of years.The Black River had been the site of villages and the salmon runs that ran on the river were important to them.The lowering of Lake Washington had a huge impact on the south end of the lake and its natural resources which affected my people and their treaty right to harvest natural resources.
In 1916, between the month of August and October, the Black River went away.And the impact must have been incredible.Joseph Moses lived in that village there on the Black River.And this is a quote from him.Um, that was quite a day for the white people at least.The water just went down, down until our landing and canoes stood dry.And there was no black river at all.There were pools, of course, and the struggling fish trapped in them.People came from miles around, laughing and hollering and stuffing the fish in gny sacks.Joseph Moses, member of the Dwamish and one of the last to live on the trib's historic land in downtown Reon.
The locks start operation in August of 1916 when boats can move between Puget Sound and Salmon Bay.But the excitement that you see in July of 1917 on July 4th when the locks are officially dedicated to me, it really shows how the excitement built that they could see it starting to work and then when itwas finally time to celebrate that this big project was complete.The stories say that people line the shores all the way from the locks into Lake Washington.July 4th, 1917 is the grand opening of the system.The papers estimate that something like a third or half of the city watched it in one form or another.And the big event was this great boat parade led by the Roosevelt.This was the boat that had taken Admiral Perryi up to the North Pole was now here to lead a parade from the locks into Lake Union and from Lake Union down to Lehi.
Something like 200 boats were in this parade.At the same time, one of the early Boeing planes is flying over the sea.So this was just the sort of great culmination of events of 63 years of dreams really playing out in this one day.This great parade, speeches, boats.I mean it must have been something to have seen.Chittenden unfortunately did not attend the 1917 ceremonies because he was on the verge of death.had to watch it from his home on North Broadway.So, he looked down over the lake.He could see the fireworks and hear all of the noise and all that, but he wasn't able to be there.Chitten, uh, one of the brilliant, effective characters in the history of Seattle.
Shows how the canal transformed Seattle’s economy by moving goods, supporting Boeing, and expanding Fisherman's Terminal. Also highlights the growth of shipyards and the role of fresh water in preserving vessels.
After opening day, we start to see the canal meet the goals of those who have built it.Opening up of commerce, of trade between freshwater and saltwater as we see goods going back and forth.We see logs coming through.We see material, raw goods going in and manufactured goods going out.We start to see the development in Lake Union of the Boeing factory is on Lake Union at about this time and in Fisherman's terminal.We start to see more fishing related activity develop.Fisherman's terminal opened before the locks were built.Initially, it was a very small morage with a very small basin.So, once the locks are completed in 1916 and the bay is full of fresh water and it's deeper, they're able to have the larger fishing boats come in.And the first ones are the Wona and the Aelas.We have a remarkable fleet of boats that home port here in Seattle at Fisherman's Terminal.
For example, this beautiful fleet of wooden halibet schooners that have been fishing for a century and many generations.And one reason they've last so long is has to do with the locks and and the fresh water and the salt water.Being able to moore these boats in fresh water.Fresh water is a tremendous advantage over salt water because that prevented marine growth such as barnacles and seaweed growing on the boat and also prevented any boring worms because they don't live in fresh water.So that's what's added to longevity of the fleet you see here.I started fishing with my father who bought who bought in this boat in 1960.It was an old boat when he bought into it.The Vansville was built in 1913.It's a traditional helibet schooner that was built for dory fishing.It has consistently fished for halibet since the day it was built has never missed a season.
Fancy and all the similar vessels around here started using the locks shortly after they were built.And a large portion of the fleet that fish in Alaska are homeported here because the climate is a little more conducive to getting work done here than it is say in Alaska and because of the goods and servicesthat are available here.So without the locks, we wouldn't have this fleet in Seattle.As you're driving across the Ballard Bridge and you look down into Fisherman's Terminal, you might not realize that you're looking at the Alaska fishing fleet.You're looking at the boats that go up.They go through the locks and out to sea and they travel all the way to the North Pacific and they catch the salmon and the crab that this region is famous for.And it's amazing to look at those boats and realize that they're responsible for about half of the American seafood catch.
And there's thousands of jobs that depend upon the work of those boats.If you go to the east and west on the canal, there's ship repair companies, there's ship building companies, there's tug companies, all the things that make the fishing fleet work.They have grown up around Fisherman's Terminal.Even before the locks and the ship canal were built, Salmon Bay was ringed with boatyards and shipyards, including the Ballard Marine Railway Company.When the locks on the ship canal were built, Salmon Bay went from being saltwater to freshwater and was no longer subject to the tides.This was a big benefit to shipyards here.But farther inland, the impact of the canal was even bigger.Boatyards and shipyards began springing up all along the canal, and for several decades, Lake Union became a major center for boat building on the west coast of the United States.
Well, this is Lake Union Dry Dock Company.We're one of Seattle's oldest businesses and started here a couple years after the locks were built 1919.We started out here building yachts uh particularly a yacht that had a raised front deck, a raised for deck.They called it a raised deck cruiser and it became very popular and the founder decided he wanted to capitalize on that.So he wanted to go into the business of building these boats.And so they bought this property, built some dry docks and went to work and quickly grew to building yachts, beautiful yachts over 100 ft long.And by 1929, we were building things such as the WT Preston.Okay.And you know the WT Preston?Yeah.The Preston is a pretty famous core of engineers boat that they use to to pull snags.Just the other day, I got to talk with a gentleman that had walked onto the boat in 1953 and worked on it until the early 1980s.
Oh man, that was in service a long time.Yeah.So, what what all were you doing to this vessel?Um, they sandlasted the whole thing, painted it.Lake Union dry dock has a lot of big equipment, but the biggest thing in the yard is dry dock number eight, which has a very special connection to the Ballard locks.It actually began its career as a floating dry dock for the Navy during World War II, a long way from Lake Union.This was built in the early part of 1944, okay?Just about a year before the war ended, right?Now, it was originally designed to go to sea, okay, and be self-contained and dry dock vessels at sea.In 1975, a company called Marine Power and Equipment bought the floating dry dock, which by then had been named the White Sands.They wanted her for their North Lake Union shipyard.
And of course, this meant bringing her through the Ballard locks.Now, the locks are wide, 80 ft to be exact, but unfortunately the wide sands was wider by about a foot.So, bringing her through was an engineering feat that almost rivaled the building of the locks themselves.It really was quite an event when it came through the locks.The word went out in the community of Ballard that, hey, something interesting is going through the locks and everybody came down.They shut the doors in their offices and came down to see it coming through.Yeah.After it came through the locks in 1975, it went to work for Marine Power and Equipment.And uh we looked over there jealously.1995, we bought the dock.We brought it over here.Yeah.And we've been keeping it busy ever since.I can tell you this has been just a real boon to Seattle.
Having the locks here, being able to get these boats in here.
Explains how the canal evolved from an industrial project into a beloved recreational corridor. Focuses on boating, opening day traditions, and the rise of rowing on the Montlake Cut.
It's almost difficult to convey how different the canal was in its early years compared to what it is today.It didn't take long before people were arguing that part of the space along the ship canal should be for people to enjoy the water.Seattle Garden Club proposed that if they could beautify the canal, then people in their pleasure boats would come through and if it was a more enjoyable experience, they would be more likely to come back.And it worked.I mean that is definitely one of the things that Seattle and the ship canal are known for is that it is beautiful place to ride your boat through or to walk along.Initially the goal of the ship canal was industrial and bringing in jobs.But then you start to see people use it for recreational use.And these slowly grow over time to now recreational boating at least from the number of boats dwarfs the number of boats going through for other purposes.
And that I think was one of the unexpected aspects of the canal.But I think for most of us maybe the most important aspect and it's what allows the canal to unite the city.In many ways,
the ship canal is important for recreational boating because it allows people to moore their boats in fresh water and then go into saltwater.And the water around Seattle and the Puet Sound is some of the best water and some of the best cruising grounds in the world.When the locks were first opened, they had a parade that started on the saltwater side, came up to the freshwater side, and since then, we've had boat parades on an annual basis, even through the war years, and it'sgotten bigger and bigger every year, and it's a lot of fun to participate.The crew races that we have now for the Windmir Cup that are part of opening day are the largest viewed crew races in the world.The windmir cap really is where many of us rowers start our journey.For me, when I was a little uh novice rower, um the first time I had ever seen rowing was through the Mont Lake Cut during the Windmir Cup.
The Washington rowing team really has been using the Mont Lake Cut in the ship canal ever since it was first established.So, you've probably seen these incredibly historic pictures of the copper dam being torn down and the water rushing through and filling up the Malt Lake Cut.Um, I'm sure there are many UDub rowers standing and watching this whole spectacle take place and thinking, you know, let's get out there tomorrow.Let's see what we can do as a team on this new waterway and let's see uh what sort of incredible things we can do from the protected water of the Malt Lake Cut.And that's exactly what they did.They started training there right away and they haven't stopped for over a hundred years.It's been huge.We're talking boys with a boat huge.We're talking dozens of Olympic gold medals.We're talking legacies of Olympic rowers that all had their beginnings at the University of Washington.
And it is because of the Mont Lake Cut and the ship canal that Seattle is internationally regarded as a beautiful venue for rowing.I've never been a rower myself, but I sure appreciate those people that get up at 5 in the morning, practice, practice, practice, get out there for a race, and then then then it all happens in a matter of3 4 5 minutes.Crew races has grown to become a big integral part of Seattle.Now, opening day, while it's sponsored by the yach club and supported by the yach club, is not a yach club event.It's a city event, and it's the largest city event in Seattle.In fact, if you look around, the largest boating event in the world.Boating has a really big place in Seattle, unique almost in in in cities around the country thanks to Hyram Chittton and the locks.
Breaks down how the locks work, including vessel passage, water-level control, and fish passage. Emphasizes the durability of the original engineering and the quality of the design.
The locks is notable for some some pretty amazing engineering design, much of which continues in operation today because Hyram Chitten had the foresight to create a lock system that was very progressive for its time in the use ofconcrete, solid concrete.There are really three major activities that take place at the locks.One is the locking of vessels through the lock chambers.That is done through a series of gates that allow vessels to pass in.Once entered, the gates close and then inside the concrete, what we call monoliths on either side of the lock chambers are open passageways with valves that control the water.So the water can either be pulled out or let in.The water either is raised or lowered to achieve the same elevation of its destination, whether that be upstream or downstream.Another important piece of the locks operation is management of the water levels between freshwater and saltwater.
The key way that is addressed is through a system of gates on the spillway that act really as barriers that hold back the water and can be raised and lowered to permit excess passage of water in high rainyseasons and snow melts.Then the third piece is the management of fish passage enabling migratory fish to enter a ladder and pass over the structure.The fish ladder was installed in 1917 as part of the original design.It served up until 1976 when new science necessitated the replacement of that system.It has a little shallower grade so that fish have an easier passage.
Sometimes we think that because something is 100 years old that it may not be the best technology, but the reality is is although we've obviously replaced certain parts, a lot of our equipment is original and the project's ingreat shape because things have been maintained pretty well.As a working engineer, I spent 27 years out here at the locks.And the bottom line is, I guess I was really impressed by the ability of these people to get it right.It was pretty incredible that it got built in the first place and it was built in the correct spot in the right way.
Tours the grounds with Chittenden’s descendants and discusses Carl Gould’s architectural designs. Then shifts to Carl English Jr. and the creation of the botanical gardens that now define the site.
Hi.Well, good morning.How are you?Welcome.Thank you.Today was a fun day.I had the privilege of meeting the great grandchildren of Hyram Chittenden and we walked around and we had a chance to look at various buildings and structures and talk about the architectural history as well as the operation ofthe locks itself.As you know, your your great-grandfather was very forward thinking and really spared no expense in who was selected to do the design of these structures.The buildings we have here on the grounds were designed by Carl Gould, who was a a famous Seattle architect that designed things like the SUSA library on the UDub campus.The core hired him to design our concrete buildings to make a statement that we're a strong agency and we care about how we look.Gould attended the AOL of Deose Arts in Paris, France that actually became known for a particular architectural style, the Bose art style.
The locks feature Carl left Ghoul's design in many places.Most of the original structures that you see and there are a lot of original structures and the small operating houses and their unique little domes, but most prominently in the administration building was intended to be the architectural focalpoint of the project.And so we put a lot of time and detail into that building and it's well worth looking at in close detail as you come to the locks.So the locks are obviously known for their beautiful gardens, but that's not the locks as it was constructed in 1917.You would have found a very bare landscape, but in 1930s, Carl English was appointed as the head horiculturalist for the locks.The Carlos English Junior Botanical Gardens is very unique.It's the only botanical garden that the Army Corve engineers maintains.And the only reason why it's here is because of its founder, Carlos English Jr.
who was hired here back in 1931 as a gardener just to molons.But he was a plant collector and he had a real passion for horiculture.So he just started planting stuff, you know, what he wanted to have here and just sort of did it on his own.It was not um it was not part of his job description.And he collected plants on vacation trips he took with his wife Edith.And they went all over the western United States collecting native plants and seeds.He also traded seeds with botanical gardens all over the world and that brought in plants from other countries.He worked here for over 40 years and this was like his life's work.It's such a lush garden landscape and has become one of Seattle's favorite parks.Really one of Seattle's personal backyards.uh place of retreat and kind of quiet reflection in a really pretty busy urban environment.
Nice balance between technology and aesthetics, I think.Yes, it it really is.So quite a legacy.Quite a legacy for everyone.
Reflects on the canal and locks as a historic but still active civic achievement. Concludes with the idea that the locks remain a symbol of public investment, endurance, and future possibility.
Surely it's important to express memory of really important moments in the city history and the building the canal was one of the big ones really.It was an idea that was so obviously an opportunity as they saw at the picnic in 1854 that was sort of inevitable that would be done.It was done.It took what 60 years to finish it and it'll always be there.It's really part of this city.It's part of Northwest culture.It's a replica.The locks is a historic place.But what's really important to remember is that it's an actively used historic place.It's dynamic.It continues to meet its mission.But I think it's a wonderful example of how we can coexist with history.Obviously, adaptations need to be made, upgrades need to be made, and we try to mesh those interests with the preservation of history, and we hope to do an even better job for the next hundred years.
Yeah.The meaning of the locks for me, it's a positive reminder of what diligent work on the behalf of the government, the core of engineers, for the people of the United States of America is capable of.When we put public investment into civil works, we can affect a century of positive change.It's really a remarkable feat what they managed to construct here, and it still operates today.I get excited when I see the locks to think about what they were capable of a hundred years ago.and just what what I should be doing and the rest of us should be trying to do.It's a positive reminder for me of what we can do today and what they were able to accomplish in the past.When you head out the lock, those gates that take you from the fresh water to the salt water of Puget Sound open up the world to you.
Once they open up, you're free to go and you think about all of the good things that can happen.When you look at the locks that's having its 100th birthday, they're not old.They can live as long as we want them to, as long as we maintain them.We made it to 100, but that's just the first big mile post.That's a buoy that we're passing, and there are many buoys ahead.