Connecting Puget Sound and Hood Canal

XP said:

I think the main purpose for connecting the 2 water bodies was just for recreational boating. They also wanted to connect then Sound to the Columbia river. Nuts.

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And yet early in the history of the U.S., canals played important roles in connecting the country. The Lake Erie canal connected the Great Lakes with the Hudson River, New York city, and the Atlantic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erie_Canal. Over three centuries (especially 18th and 19th), the Brits built an amazing series of canals that connected most of their major rivers and cities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_British_canal_system).
This allowed goods to be shipped in bulk from one coast to the other. The canals have amazing locks and even aquaducts that carried boats hundreds of feet above valleys. The shift to rail and especially roads killed off their commercial justification, but they have now a new life as recreational arteries.

Imagine if you could take a small recreational boat from southeast Alaska, through the Inland Passage of B.C., through Puget Sound, over the hump to Black Lake, the Black River, Chehalis River, over a hump to the Cowlitz, to the Columbia, and up the Columbia to Idaho and even Montana. Of course, the economic don't pencil out today and the permitting, land acquisition, and environmental issues would be monumental.
Steve