History
In 1861, landowner Harvey Pike cut the first ditch connecting Lake Washington's Union Bay and Lake Union's Portage Bay, but gave up and deeded his land to the Lake Washington Ship Canal Company, which built a transiting rail line for portaging goods between the lakes. This rail line continued use until 1878. In 1883, David Denny and Thomas Burke had a canal built for floating logs.
Cheshiahud lived and carved canoes on the shores of Portage Bay for many years from 1885. In 1909, the Pay Streak, a vaudeville and sideshows section of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exhibition, ended in a gondola ramp and esplanade on the north shores of Portage Bay.
For 14 years following World War II, the SV Fantome was stranded in Portage Bay pending payment to King County of back taxes.
Read more about this topic: Portage Bay
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“I am not a literary man.... I am a man of science, and I am interested in that branch of Anthropology which deals with the history of human speech.”
—J.A.H. (James Augustus Henry)
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)