Remember when you could remember everything?
In a conversation with a couple friends today, we got to wondering where Lake Washington's outlet was before the Montlake cut was dug? How did Lake Union drain before the Ship Canal and locks were built?
Thanks,
K
In the early days of railroading in this area, the Northern Pacific and the Milwaukee Road had an interchange in the Renton area called Black River Junction near the Green/Duwamish River. I've never come across another reference to the Black River, so I'm wonering if the Black River back then might have been the outlet to Lake Washington.
If memory serves correctly Lake Washington basically drained where the current water way is located. When the locks were built the Cedar River drained into the Green at about where South Center is now. With the constructon of the locks more water was required to operate them and the Cedar was diverted into Lake Washington. This in turn raised the overall level of Lake Washington and with the Montlake cut the area of Lk Union also grew in size.
Dave
Lake Washington flowed south towards the current location of Renton. And yes the outlet was the Black river. The Cedar river didn't flow into Lake Washington but jointed the Black downstream of the Lake. It was divert to the Lake following the re-routing of the outlet flow through the MountLake cut. Interestly the Black joined the Green and the White to form the Duwamish. The White used to periodically switch back and forth between the Duwamish and the Puyallup. Following a flood a century or so ago the White was fixed in place as a Puyallup trib.
Sorry but don't recall where lake Union flowed. But clearly man has been busy in the Lake Washington, Duwamish, and Puyallup system re-arranging their plumbing to fit our needs.
Tight lines
S malma
Yes the black river did run out of the south end of the lake.I am not sure but I believe it tied into the green just east of south center to form the duwamish.Parts of the river bed are still visible N.W. of the sewer plant in Renton. I have also seen old photos of the montlake cut or posibly portage bay with a water fall so there was also drainage down the ship canal area to lake union and shilshole bay. I know the black river was rerouted to stabilize the lake level for the ship canal and lock project. The lake level as we know it is much higher than it was naturaly.I have no idea how I retained this information or where I got it from! Now I'm wondering if the cedar river was also routed into the lake,I cant remember?maybe somebody could clear this up for me.
hope this helps a little,Doug P.
Will Fish For Food
Actually, other way around, they lowered it 9 feet:Originally Posted by lefty tailing loops
http://www.djc.com/special/century/10060859.htm
A few additions to the above information. It was delta deposition from the Cedar across a narrow marine embayment that first isolated Lake Washington from the marine waters of Puget Sound. Whether or not the Cedar flowed into Lake Washington is probably more a matter of definition and time. Before Lake Washington was lowered in 1916 the Cedar usually flowed into the Black River about 400 yards downstream or the Lake. However, rivers move around a bit, especially on a low gradient delta, and at times it or a distributary did discharge into the Lake. On a very high tide in Elliott Bay and high river flows (say like today!) it was possible to run shallow draft boats up the Duwamish and into Lake Washington. In some of the historical photos one may see a log chute--a precursor to the ship canal--draining westward through the Montlake cut and delivering logs to the mill on the north shore of Lake Union.
So much for the history lesson!
It was my understanding that there was no connection between Lake Union and Shilshole Bay. Lake Union drained across a low swampy area which sometimes had a marshy pond (Portage Lake, Portage Creek) into Lake Washington. At least this is what I was told by my ancient fourth-grade teacher. When she was young she and her family often took the train to Fremont and canoed across Lake Union, Portage Lake and Lake Washington to go camping in the wilds of the east side.
My understanding is that the Black drained L Washington and the Cedar joined the Black. The Lake abandoned its natural outlet when the Montlake cut lowered the lake 9-12 feet, and the region's fathers diverted the Cedar into the lake. However, when one looks at the local topography, it seems clear that all those confluences at the south end of lake Washington would have been pretty ambiguous, and that whole North-Kent-Valley/Lower-Lake Washington area was likely one big wetland complex (probably heavily wooded) with those several river channles shifting around from time to time.
The White River situation is very interesting too, as Smalma mentioned. It's my understanding, however, that the shifting of the White from the Puyallup to Duwamish drainages, while historically natural, was driven by the presence of large logjam complexes in the floodplain, and got some help from time to time by farmers at one end of the valley or the other lookiing for water and/or flood control. The White was eventually "fixed" into the Puyallup as much as anything else by the southern farmers' higher degree of skill with dynamite.
Your right, Ray. While talking to old timers that worked for the Inter-county River Improvement, that is the story they told me.
Remember when you could remember everything?
Thanks to all who contributed to my better understanding of the original geography of Lake Washington. After posting my original query, I also contacted the Washington Museum of Science and Industry in hopes they might have an old map I could peruse. Better late than never, I heard back today from Mary Montgomery, MOHAI's Ask-A-Historian and am posting the bulk of her reply below.
Thanks again,
K
What a great thread. Thanks to all who contributed.
WT
I've pasted an article below from the Seattle Times' archives I recalled reading a few years ago about the building of the locks and the lowering of Lake Washington. Interestingly, there were a number of proposed routes for a waterway connecting Lake Washington and Puget Sound, including one along the current I-90 route that was started but stopped because of funding problems.
As others have said, the White River originally had two channels. One that flowed north and merged with the Green River and the second along the current route that empties into the Puyallup. The south channel was called the Stuck River. A flood in 1906 diverted most of the water through the Stuck River and a diversion dam was built to keep the river flowing south. If anyone is interested, I can scan and post a portion of a geology map that shows parts of the old White River channel in Auburn.
A Hidden Past
Unlocking The Lake
Peyton Whitely
Seattle Times Eastside Bureau
SIX ROUTES WERE CONSIDERED FOR THE LAKE WASHINGTON SHIP CANAL. WHEN IT WAS COMPLETED AT SALMON BAY IN 1916, IT DROPPED THE LEVEL OF THE LAKE, ELIMINATING TOWNS AND THE BLACK RIVER, AND CREATING A WHOLE NEW EASTSIDE.
If things had gone differently, Kirkland's waterfront parks would be underwater.
The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks would be in downtown Seattle.
And steamships would cruise toward Lake Washington from close to where Safeco Field stands.
The startling changes would have come if different decisions had been made, if different business alliances had been formed or if different political viewpoints had prevailed in a venture that seems nearly inconceivable now.
The venture was building the Lake Washington Ship Canal, a task that resulted in dropping the water level on Lake Washington by 9 feet.
Towns and businesses were destroyed. Piers where boats had tied up led only to mud. An entire river disappeared.
While accounts differ, it's generally agreed that a connection between Lake Washington and Puget Sound first was proposed at a picnic on July 4, 1854, on the shore of Lake Union by Thomas Mercer, one of Seattle's most famous pioneers.
The reasons were based, as they often are, on money. While Seattle was developing along the shores of Puget Sound, timber, coal and other resources were waiting to the east. But getting there wasn't easy. Moving a load of coal from Issaquah to a ship on the Seattle waterfront required 11 cargo transfers from wagons to boats.
As with many ideas, the concept was easy. The execution was something else.
In 1869 another pioneer, Harvey Pike, tried to dig a canal through the Montlake area with a pick and shovel. In 1883 a group of businessmen built a small wooden lock in Fremont. And in 1885 a 16-foot-wide canal was dug between Lake Washington and Lake Union.
But such rudimentary efforts were far from what was envisioned. Chittenden's solution
Proposals of the time described how Lake Washington would become a great naval harbor and fleets of commercial ships would anchor there, their hulls free of weeds in the fresh water.
Federal money was provided for an 1890 survey. Five routes were considered, providing a startling look at what might have been.
One route would have followed the Duwamish River and entered the lake from the south. Another, known as the Mercer Farm route, would have gone from Elliott Bay through downtown Seattle to Lake Union. A path slightly farther south also would have connected Elliott Bay to Lake Union. Both central Seattle routes would have required double locks and land cuts hundreds of feet deep.
Another route would have gone between Magnolia and Queen Anne Hill to Lake Union. The final option went from Salmon Bay to Lake Union and Lake Washington.
A group of businessmen led by a former territorial governor, Eugene Semple, had its own plans: to dig a canal a mile long and 300 feet wide through Beacon Hill.
Semple gained the support of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and other backers, and digging began in 1895. Lawsuits were filed, financiers pulled out, and work stopped in 1904. But the work helped create Harbor Island, and Interstate 90 runs through the excavated gap in Beacon Hill where the canal was to go.
The real action started when an Army major named Hiram M. Chittenden arrived in 1906 as Seattle district engineer. Chittenden advocated a Salmon Bay route, said the locks should be built from concrete instead of wood and recommended the configuration of one large lock and one small one. He also recommended against having another set of locks at Montlake, concluding they could be skipped by allowing Lake Washington to fall 9 feet.
Extensive political and business maneuvering followed, and in 1910 Congress OK'd spending $2.2 million to begin the canal.
Work started in September 1911 and took nearly five years to finish. The Ballard Locks opened in August 1916, and formal dedication took place July 4, 1917. Eyesore on the Eastside
For the Eastside, the effects weren't what anyone expected.
Kirkland was the biggest city at the time, but most of the area was nearly wilderness. For years, the exposed lake bottom was an eyesore.
The East Side Journal, a weekly newspaper, reported in 1918 that flowers were being planted near the city ferry dock to transform the waterfront "from an unsightly spot into a beautiful flower garden." As late as April 1926, the paper reported that a builder, Guy Farrar, planned to develop a "Spanish village" along 2 1/2 miles of Kirkland waterfront. A few Spanish-style bungalows were built, but the project was never completed.
The Ballard Locks did generate some shoreside activity, including the basing of a whaling fleet at Bellevue's Meydenbauer Bay and the development of shipbuilding at Houghton, where hundreds of ocean-going vessels were built and thousands of people worked during World War II.
But after the wartime boom, shipbuilding faded, and as late as the 1960s, much of the Eastside's waterfront was viewed as second-class property, a place where commercial oil tanks and creosoted piers were the most common scenes.
The lowering did have an unforeseen effect. Much of Lake Washington Boulevard, which became the main Eastside highway before Interstate 405, was built on the former lake bottom. It was the automobile, not shipping, that transformed the area.
How a river vanished
One of the most remarkable effects occurred at the south end of Lake Washington, where the natural outlet was the Black River, which drained into the Duwamish. About a mile from the lake, the Cedar River drained into the Black.
Early photos show a bucolic scene of lazy farms along the Black, but nature was far from benign. Almost annually, the lake would overflow, and the rivers would flood large areas of what's now Renton, Tukwila and the Green River Valley.
A 1911 flood was particularly bad, and in 1912 Renton dug a commercial waterway that moved the Cedar into a 2,000-foot-long, 80-foot-wide channel which moved the mouth of the river to the lake. Four years later, the ship canal was completed and the Black River disappeared.
Joseph Moses, a Duwamish tribal member, later recalled what he saw then: "That was quite a day, for the white people at least. The waters 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 into gunny sacks," he wrote.
The Ballard Locks were officially named the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks in 1956 and are one of Seattle's top visitor attractions, drawing 1.5 million people a year. More than 80,000 vessels a year use the locks, 80 percent of them pleasure craft.
Kent,
Absolutly fasinating. I knew some of the history but know a lot more now.
The Corps of Engineers museam at the locks is worth a visit.
Thanks for the thread.
Bart
Attached are portions of USGS 1:125,000 topographic quads from 1895 and 1900. The full maps are available on the UW website.
Map 1 is from 1900 and shows the south end of Lake Washington and the Black River and Cedar River channels.
Map 2 is from 1900 and shows the White River-Stuck River divergence in the Auburn area and its convergence with the Green River. Interestingly, downstream from the White-Green convergence, the river was known as the White. The White and Black Rivers converged to form the Duwamish.
Map 3 is from 1895 and shows Lake Union, Portage Bay, and Union Bay. It appears that Preston’s fourth grade teacher was telling tales out of school, as there is an outlet stream at the northwest corner of Lake Union. I found another Seattle Times article about the ship canal that is about four times as long as the one posted above, and it indicates the stream was variously known as Ross, Outlet, and Shilshole Creek.
Map 4 is from 1895 and shows Salmon Bay, Interbay, and Shilshole Bay. According to the Times article, Salmon Bay was usually a mud flat at low tide, probably similar to the bays in the South Sound like Mud Bay near Olympia.
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