Completed in 1917, the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks connect Lake Union and Lake Washington to Puget Sound. Army Corps of Engineers officer Hiram Chittenden recognized that a navigable connection between the freshwater lakes east of downtown and the saltwater Sound would let commercial and pleasure craft move between them without the dangerous passage around Shilshole Bay. The project excavated the Lake Washington Ship Canal across north Seattle, installed large and small locks handling a twenty-six-foot water-level difference, and created a botanical garden on the south bank that remains one of the best-maintained in the city.
A fish ladder beside the locks lets salmon and steelhead migrate between the Sound and lake spawning grounds; underwater viewing windows let you watch the fish climbing between July and November. On summer weekends, the locks handle hundreds of boats — sailboats, kayaks, fishing vessels, yachts — in a slow procession between saltwater and fresh. Watching a boat rise twenty feet as the chamber fills is a quietly moving demonstration of water, gravity, and patience.