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Going With The Flow

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COURTESY OF THE ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS The 1903 record of the Fremont Dam was photographed from the old low bridge to Fremont. It, like the contemporary bascule bridge, was in line with Fremont Avenue. PAUL DORPAT This view looks at the old dam site framed by the Fremont Bridge.

HERE'S A DAM puzzle for the recently revived Fremont Historical Society. The original photograph for this scene comes from an Army Corps of Engineers collection and is dated 1903. That year, the Fremont dam broke in October, lowering Lake Union about two feet and sending a torrent of fresh water into Salmon Bay.

So here's the question: Is this that dam before the break or after it? Another way of putting it: Was this photo taken in connection with the 1903 break or as evidence of the work the Army Corps had done on the outlet the year before? In 1902, the corps straightened and widened the outlet between Fremont and Salmon Bay, enlarging the capacity of the old meandering stream by three times. But while seeming to encourage construction of the Lake Washington Ship Canal by doing the stream work, the corps also seemed to discourage it in a 1903 report concluding that the locals had exaggerated the need for a fresh-water harbor and there was no urgency to build a canal. In the accompanying dam scene, the stone-lined outlet directly below it seems bone dry except for what appears to be a leak — or two. The dam is spouting a small stream from the left (north side) and perhaps another from the right. This photo, then, may be evidence of both the corps 1902 work on the canal and a dam about to break.

At the close of 1903, about two months after the dam break, the corps appropriated funds for "enlarging the gates of the Lake Union outlet." This new, bigger Fremont dam lasted 10 years until it, too, broke — lowering Lake Union seven feet. Two years later, when the new locks at Ballard were first closed and the Lake Union outlet allowed to fill Salmon Bay with fresh water, the old Fremont dam site was inundated.

Paul Dorpat specializes in historical photography and has published several books on early Seattle.