The Long Dig: Pushing the Lake Washington Canal Through Congress
With Congress on the verge of a $25,000 appropriation to begin work, a Whatcom senator's supporters remind voters he backed the Lake Washington canal plan — the waterway that would one day link Salmon Bay to Lake Union and Lake Washington.
WHATCOM, Aug. 4 — [Special.] — The fact that Congress is about to appropriate $25,000 to commence work on the Lake Washington canal has awakened renewed interest on this subject here, and calls to mind the fact that State Senator Frank H. Richards, who is now a candidate for renomination in this district, supported and voted for house memorial No. 8, which was passed by the legislature of 1891. Attorney Fairchfield, of this city, one of the senator's most ardent supporters and chairman of the county central committee, made one of the brightest and most telling speeches at the last state convention — in fact the only speech made on the subject by any member of the Whatcom county delegation — in favor of the adoption of the Lake Washington canal plank in the platform upon which the campaign of 1892 was fought and won.
The house memorial referred to is found on pages 425 and 426 of the session laws of 1891, and, after the usual preamble, concludes as follows: "We respectfully ask and solicit that your honorable bodies will speedily appropriate such sum as may be sufficient to construct that portion of said canal from tide-water at Salmon bay on Puget sound to Lake Union, and from Lake Union to Lake Washington, in the speediest manner consistent with good work; and as in duty bound your memorialists will ever pray."
Senator Parkinson, then the colleague of Senator Richards from this county, and known to local fame as "Blue Jay," was one of the twelve members of the senate absent and not voting. In view of the interest still felt in this most important matter, and the fact that Mr. Richards' position concerning it has been misrepresented, it is no more than just to him that his record upon it at the only time when it has been before the legislature should be made known.
“We respectfully ask and solicit that your honorable bodies will speedily appropriate such sum as may be sufficient to construct that portion of said canal from tide-water at Salmon bay on Puget sound to Lake Union.”
The Lake Washington Ship Canal would not actually open until 1917, after decades of lobbying, federal appropriations and dredging — and it permanently redrew Seattle's shoreline, connecting Puget Sound to Lake Washington. The fight over who pays for transformative infrastructure, and which politician gets credit, is older than the canal itself.
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