Canal Reserve Land

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Shaping the landscape map      

On November 25, 1898, the King County Superior Court approved the condemnation of land along the proposed route of the Lake Washington Ship Canal in Seattle. The court acted on a petition from the King County Board of County Commissioners, which met a requirement laid out by the federal government. An act passed by Congress in 1894 authorized the Army Corps of Engineers to begin planning to build a ship canal between Lake Washington and Puget Sound once the land was secured.

All three of the proposed routes for the canal across the Montlake isthmus appear on this 1912 Baist real estate map. The southernmost, known as Pike’s Canal Reserve and marked with a “21” on this map, was platted in 1869. The Government Ship Canal, also known as the Canal Reserve, was condemned by the King County commissioners in 1898 and transferred to the federal government for the Lake Washington Ship Canal. Before construction began, the Lake Washington Canal n this map was chosen by the Army Corps of Engineers because of its straighter alignment with the route of the shipping channel in Portage Bay. Courtesy Paul Dorpat.
WSDOT

This was the second of three proposed routes for a canal across the portage and it encompassed the land around the log canal built by the Lake Washington Improvement Company in 1885. The first, known as Pike's Canal Reserve, was located along the southern portion of the Montlake Portage.

The canal would eventually open in 1917 to the north of the 1898 canal reserve. Visit HistoryLink.org to learn more about the Canal Reserve Land.