WRITTEN BY PAUL DORPAT

COURTESY OF U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS

A contemporary photograph of the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks taken from the same prospect as the historical would have required a roost in one of the upper limbs of the trees landscaping the terraced hill that ascends from the locks to the English Gardens.

PAUL DORPAT

IN THE DESCRIPTIVE yet homely parlance of hydraulics, the historical photograph reveals what the Army Corps of Engineers called the "dewatered pit" of the Ship Canal locks at Ballard. From the groundbreaking in 1911, the locks took six years to build. This photo was taken in the fall of 1912.

That the historical photographer from the Curtis and Miller studio stood on higher ground than I did for the "now" is evident from the elevation of the Magnolia side on the right. The "then" looks both across and down on the locks, the "now" merely across them. Why?

The dry pit is considerably wider than the combined big and small locks because the excavation cut well into the bank on the north side of the locks. Much of the mechanicals for the big lock's gates are hidden in the hill that was reconstituted and shaped with terraces in the summer of 1915 once the concrete forms for the locks took their now familiar shape.

Most of the dirt cofferdam, upper right, that separated the construction site from the temporary channel was removed in 1915 after the great gates to the locks were closed. Next, on Feb. 2, 1916, the locks were deliberately flooded and the doors opened to permit commuters to make emergency runs to downtown Seattle by boat when the "Big Snow" (second deepest in city history) shut down the trolleys.

The locks were left open while the dam was built to join the locks to the Magnolia side. The link completed, the doors were again shut and Salmon Bay was allowed to fill with fresh water to the level of Lake Union in July 1916. The small lock began working later in the month, and on Aug. 3, 1916, the first vessels (from the Army Corps fleet) were lifted in the big lock. The formal opening followed on July 4, 1917.