A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of launching my newest book, Seattle’s Locks and Ship Canal: A History and Guide. Written with my friend and Executive Director of HistoryLink.org, Jennifer Ott, the book tells the stories of one of the most pivotal landscape changes in Seattle history. It is published by the University of Washington Press and is an edited and updated version of our previous book Waterway: The Story of Seattle’s Locks and Ship Canal, which came out in 2017, to honor the centennial of the opening of the locks.

The new edition is smaller, has fewer words, and not as many images. So, what gives. When we first wrote the book, our plan and our mission was to write the definitive history of the Ship Canal and Locks, from geologic time to present. Because of that mission, we dove down many deep history holes to ferret out the details. It was fun and, we like to think, provided the information that would tell a full story that had not been told previously. But we also know that not everyone has the history geek proclivities that Jen and I do. In that light, we teamed up with the UW Press to produce a new edition, still with the key parts of the story but not with all of the details.

I just got a box of books in the mail, so if you are interested in purchasing copies of Seattle’s Locks and Ship Canal, you can do so through this link, which takes you to my Square page. Happy to sign and/or inscribe the book.

One story that we kept in the book and that I still find to be singularly interesting is what happened to salmon. For thousands of years, they had moved via the lake’s outlet river, the Black, between the salt water of Puget Sound and the fresh water of Lake Washington and the Cedar River. The completion of the Locks and Ship Canal, however, lowered the lake by nine feet and severed its connection to the Black. How then did fish that migrated up the Black River find their way back to Lake Washington after the opening of the locks? Unfortunately, we have no records of how it happened, but we can make some viable suggestions.

Historically, salmon would have been able to reach Lake Union by swimming up Ross Creek, which once connected the lake via Salmon Bay to Puget Sound. After 1886, when two, small-scale, human-made channels linked Lake Washington to Lake Union and Lake Union to Salmon Bay, fish would have been able to swim this route to Lake Union. In addition, they could have traveled out from Lake Washington via a lock that linked the two lakes. We can hypothesize they did so because newspaper articles as late as 1911 reported that people regularly caught salmon, weighing up to 28 pounds, at the western base of the dam that formed the outlet of Lake Union.

If salmon were already traveling via the pre-1916 canal system, then the post-1916 route might not have been a problem for many returning salmon. Plus, when the locks opened, some recently born salmon must have lived in Lake Washington and made their one and only migration out through the locks. Knowing only this route from their birth waters, they would simply have returned home via the locks. Subsequent generations would have followed their hereditary imperative.

Also consider, though, like the previous ideas, completely impossible to prove, is that salmon that initially swam out the Black and Duwamish Rivers on their outward journeys (between about 1908 and 1916) simply returned to Lake Washington via the locks. For fish with an excellent sense of direction and ability to smell their birth stream and regularly migrated hundreds to thousands of miles, locating and traveling up the new canal route, which was less than 10 miles from their old route, might not have presented any problem at all.

And, then salmon had to get past the locks. The intended upstream route was a fish ladder. State law from 1890 required a ladder or fishway for “any dam or other obstruction across any stream in the state which any food fish are wont to ascend.” A ten-step concrete ladder with wooden weirs was included in the original design. Poorly built by modern standards, with very little design consideration for how fish actually use fishways, the original ladder was little used by salmon. Going out to sea was more hazardous, as no provisions were made to facilitate the passage of smolts migrating to salt water.

One further fish-­related change has occurred at the locks. In the landmark 1974 court case, United States v. State of Washington, Judge George H. Boldt restored the rights of tribal nations guaranteed to them by treaties they signed with the federal govern-ment in 1854 and 1855. Specifically, they had reserved the right to fish in “usual and accustomed” areas and the right to harvest half the fish. At the locks, one result is that anglers from Muckleshoot Indian Tribe (above the locks) or Suquamish Indian Tribe (below the locks) continue to harvest fish seasonally. Although the locks did not exist then, ancestors of the Muckleshoot and Suquamish had long fished in Lake Wash-ington and Lake Union, and the waterways were and are part of their usual and accustomed fishing grounds.

As I reflect back on the 110 years since they opened, I would argue that the Lake Washington Ship Canal and Hiram M. Chittenden Locks have transformed the waterways and shorelines of Seattle and its surroundings more than any other event before or since. They opened up miles of waterfront, helped cement the importance of the maritime industry, and fostered a connection between the interior freshwater world and the wider salt water world. In many ways, it’s hard to separate the waterway from the history and character of the city itself.

But the ship canal’s environmental and cultural costs have been steep. Marshlands were drained and converted to dumps, lakeside vegetation has died, and salmon have had to find new migration routes. Plus, the death of the Black River and loss of use of wetlands was devastating to the Native people who had relied on them for thousands of years.

Despite all of the many changes, the Ship Canal, Locks, and Seattle have long been intertwined: economically, recreationally, industrially, and culturally. Not all of the impacts have been positive and most have been in ways that early canal supporters could not have imagined. But throughout that century-plus of use, the canal has reflected Seattleites’ image of themselves and the city they inhabit and hope to inhabit. Few other places in Seattle are as central to the city’s identity.

Jen and I have three talks lined up about Seattle’s Locks and Ship Canal.

April 22 – 7pm – Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park. To Register for this event.

May 7 – 6pm – Hiram M. Chittenden Locks. More information to come.

May 14 – 5pm – Barnes and Noble Books, University District. To Register for this event.

If you missed it earlier, or simply desire to purchase another one, here’s a link to buy copies of Seattle’s Locks and Ship Canal. Happy to sign and/or inscribe the book.

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