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A Century Old

One hundred years ago this week, on June 27, 1925, the Montlake Bridge opened in Seattle over the Montlake Cut of the Lake Washington Ship Canal. Decades earlier, Harvey Pike started to dig a ditch between Lake Washington's Union Bay and Lake Union's Portage Bay, but soon gave up. In the 1880s, work crews – hired by a group of investors that included David Denny and Thomas Burke – widened, deepened, and completed a still-narrow passage, putting in two locks to compensate for Lake Washington's higher elevation. In the 1890s, the U.S. Navy and the Army Corps of Engineers endorsed a canal that would allow the passage of larger ships, but false starts, squabbles, and even an attempt to cut a separate canal farther south through Beacon Hill delayed the project for years.

In 1906 a new Corps district commander, Hiram M. Chittenden, took charge and proposed a pair of concrete locks near Ballard, but no lock at Montlake. This meant that the water level of Lake Washington would drop to that of Lake Union when the two were joined. Construction of the canal began in 1909, and Chittenden secured federal funds in 1910. The work took several years – including mishaps – and soon after the locks were completed in 1916, the final cut was made at Montlake. Over the next three months the level of Lake Washington fell by almost nine feet.

A span over the Montlake Cut was sorely needed, but Seattle voters denied funding on five occasions between 1914 and 1922, and when a $500,000 bond issue finally was passed in 1923, it was ruled void for technical reasons. In 1924, voters emphatically approved the plans, and the crossing was completed in less than a year. This bridge was the last of the four bascule bridges built over the canal, after the Ballard, Fremont, and University bridges, and is widely considered to be the most beautiful, partly because of its distinctive Gothic control towers. Unlike the other three bridges, the Montlake Bridge is owned and operated by WSDOT and is part of the short State Route 513 that runs from State Route 520 to Sand Point.

Determined and Bold

This week in 1909, Seattle stood center stage in Washington women's dramatic push to achieve the vote as the city played host to the 41st annual convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Washington suffrage proponents including Emma Smith Devoe and May Arkwright Hutton welcomed the arrival of the Suffrage Special, a Northern Pacific train that had traveled cross-country carrying more than 250 leading national and international suffragists. The Suffrage Special stopped in Spokane and Tacoma before finally reaching King Street Station in Seattle on June 29.

The next day, as prominent Seattle women welcomed national suffragists to their fair city, the Washington Equal Suffrage Association began the convention in downtown Seattle. Sparks flew during these proceedings, igniting a blaze of embarrassing publicity. Over the next week, the women welcomed Washington male voters, courted college-aged suffragists, and attended a July 4 meeting at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition.