Lake Washington Ferries

The Lake Washington ferries in King County, Washington provided the only efficient means for transporting goods and passengers across the lake prior to the opening of the first floating bridge in 1940. The ferries ran between Kirkland, Bellevue, and Houghton across Lake Washington to East Madison Street in Seattle's Madison Park for ten cents each way. They soon became so popular that the King County Port Commission established a public ferry in 1900, competing with private boats. In 1913 a reconfigured side-wheeler steamboat, the wooden Leschi, became the first Seattle-built automobile ferry. By 1922 the county ferry system was in such financial difficulty that it appointed its largest competitor to run the system. The 1940 opening of the Lake Washington floating bridge was the beginning of the end for the lake ferries. However, during World War II the ferries carried workers to the Lake Washington Shipyard, where auxiliary ships were built for the U.S. Navy, and made a tidy profit. A year after the tolls were removed from 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.

Famous quotes containing the words lake and/or washington:

    His education lay like a film of white oil on the black lake of his barbarian consciousness. For this reason, the things he said were hardly interesting at all. Only what he was.
    —D.H. (David Herbert)

    The government is huge, stupid, greedy and makes nosy, officious and dangerous intrusions into the smallest corners of life—this much we can stand. But the real problem is that government is boring. We could cure or mitigate the other ills Washington visits on us if we could only bring ourselves to pay attention to Washington itself. But we cannot.
    —P.J. (Patrick Jake)