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 faults Lowland. In particular, to the southeast of Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier they reflect a regional pattern of NNW oriented faulting, including the Entiat Fault in the North Cascades and the Portland Hills and related faults around Portland (see QFFDB fault map). Yet the SHZ and WRZ may be integral to the regional geology of Puget Sound, possibly revealing some deep and significant facets, and may also present significant seismic hazard. The WRZ and SHZ are associated with the "southern Washington Cascades conductor" (SWCC), a formation of enhanced electrical conductivity lying roughly between Riffe Lake and Mounts St. Helens,