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 lie west of the crustal blocks that underlie the Puget Lowland, and again their possible impact on the Puget Sound region is unknown. One of these faults, the "Sequim Fault Zone" (striking east from the town of Sequim), crosses Discovery Bay (and various possible extensions of the Hood Canal Fault) and bounds the Port Ludlow Uplift ("uplift of unknown origin" on the map); it appears to extend to the Southern Whidbey Island Fault. An "Everett Fault", running east-northeast along the bluffs between Mukilteo and Everett – that is, east of the SWIF and at the southern edge of the Everett