Lake Washington steamboats and ferries the floating bridge, the last ferry route was retired, and the boat was sold to the Washington State Ferries, which had taken over the Puget Sound Navigation Company in 1951. Lake Washington steamboats and ferries Lake Washington steamboats and ferries operated from about 1875 to 1951, transporting passengers, vehicles and freight across Lake Washington, a large lake to the east of Seattle, Washington. Before modern highways and bridges were built, the only means of crossing the lake, other than the traditional canoe, was by steamboat, and, later, by ferry. While there was no easily navigable connection to Puget Sound, the
Puget Sound melting retreat of the Vashon Glaciation eroded the land, creating a drumlin field of hundreds of aligned drumlin hills. Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish (which are ribbon lakes), Hood Canal, and the main Puget Sound basin were altered by glacial forces. These glacial forces are not specifically "carving", as in cutting into the landscape via the mechanics of ice/glaciers, but rather eroding the landscape from melt water of the Vashon Glacier creating the drumlin field. As the ice retreated, vast amounts of glacial till were deposited throughout the Puget Sound region. The soils of the region, less than ten thousand