The Forgotten Bid for a Puget Sound Navy Yard
Decades before the bustling military presence on the Sound, visionaries argued that a ship canal connecting Puget Sound to Lake Washington would provide the most natural navy yard in the world.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Representative Whitaker of Oregon has introduced a joint resolution instructing the Secretary of the Navy to appoint a commission of three officers to visit Oregon and Washington Territory and report upon the propriety of establishing a navy yard at some suitable point on the Pacific coast, north of the 42d parallel. When Mr. Seward was here in 1869, he spoke of Puget Sound as the 'future Navy Yard of the World.' On his recommendation, Gen. Alexander, U.S. Engineer, made a survey for a ship canal connecting the waters of Puget Sound and those of Lake Washington, with the view of utilizing the freshwater lake for a navy yard. We personally know from frequent interviews with the General that the report was as strongly favorable to the project as language could make it. He frequently affirmed there was not another place in the known world with equal natural advantages for a shipyard; that it would cost more every year to supply the navy yards of England with freshwater than the entire cost of building this canal; and that its construction would reclaim tide and overflowed lands of value greatly in excess of its cost. The length of the canal from tide water to the lake will be about two miles. The lake is about 20 miles long by 9 wide in its widest part, with sufficient depth of water to float the navies of the world. In near proximity are immense bodies of the finest ship-building timber upon the continent, with inexhaustible coal fields and iron mines. These facts will not always be overlooked by the Government, and why they have been so long ignored is only because a Territory has no political influence at Washington—nothing to trade for Government favors.
“He frequently affirmed, in the most positive manner, that there was not, another place in the known world with equal natural advantages for a ship yard.”
The vision of connecting Lake Washington to the Sound was eventually realized with the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks in 1917. The 1880 editorial highlights a timeless frustration in Seattle: the feeling that the region's immense natural assets are neglected by federal powers because the Pacific Northwest lacks the political leverage of the East Coast.
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