Lake Washington Ship Canal begun in 1906, and work began in earnest five years later. The delays in canal planning and construction resulted in the U.S. Navy building the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington, which is located across the Sound from Seattle. For centuries, people had been dragging boats between the lakes, giving names like "carry a canoe" "sxWátSadweehL" to the crossing points. In 1854 Seattle pioneer Thomas Mercer proposed canals connecting Lake Union and Lake Washington to Puget Sound in a speech at the first Independence Day celebration of the Seattle area's first permanent white settlement, shortly after its founding. Mercer
Lake Kapowsin Lake Kapowsin Lake Kapowsin is a lake in Pierce County, Washington, about halfway between Tacoma on Puget Sound, and Mount Rainier in the Cascade Mountains. The lake is long and wide, lying in a channel formed by meltwater from the Puget lobe of the Vashon glacier during the Pleistocene glaciation. A small unnamed island lies in the northern half of the lake. As indicated by a drowned forest in the lake and other evidence, the Puyallup River was inundated about 550 years ago by a lahar from Mount Rainier called the Electron Mudflow. The mudflow partially filled the channel (leading