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
Puget Sound and Pacific Railroad Puget Sound and Pacific Railroad The Puget Sound and Pacific Railroad operates over 150 miles of track serving the U.S. State of Washington, and is headquartered in Centralia, Washington where interchanges with the BNSF Railway and Union Pacific Railroad are made. The company began operations on August 30, 1997, when the line was purchased from the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF) by the ParkSierra Railgroup, which also formed the Arizona and California Railroad and the California Northern Railroad. The ParkSierra Railgroup was purchased in January 2002 by RailAmerica. In 2012, RailAmerica was purchased by Genesee and Wyoming Inc with