THE BALLARD LOCKS

by | Aug 16, 2015 | photography, travel | 27 comments

IMG_0397 Engineers Who Dare to Create.

I’m not the kind of person who looks down at the currents, tides, and waves passing through a big, deep body of water and think, Hey, I could build a bridge across that.

Not on your life. I mean, where would a person even start?

And who would dare to create a large engineering marvel like the Panama Canal? If you’ve ever been through it, you’ve seen how huge it is: a series of locks on both ends and a lake in the middle. It makes you wonder who in his right mind had the audacity to think it was even possible to build a 48-mile-long canal through mosquito-infested land in someone else’s country.

An engineer, of course … along with a bunch of politicians.

Grand Coulee Dam is another engineering marvel. If you haven’t spent a day touring it, I’d highly recommend you do so.

The Hiram Chittenden Locks

For centuries people in the Pacific Northwest carried or dragged their boats between Lake Washington and Lake Union. If it had been up to people like me, we might still be doing it (or paying someone else to do the dragging). But when logging became big business here, they had to find a way to get their logs down to Puget Sound. In 1883, David Denny and Thomas Burke hired a crew of Chinese laborers to dig a canal.

Connecting the bodies of water was complicated, though, by the fact that the lakes were considerably higher than the saltwater. Call in the engineers.

In 1906, the Army Corps of Engineers sent Hiram Chittenden to be the Army District Engineer. Hiram looked at the various proposals, asked for more money, and proposed a double concrete lock with steel gates instead of a wooden lock.

You can read more here about the history, construction, and operation of the Hiram Chittenden Locks, better known as the Ballard Locks.

Our Argosy Cruise through the Ballard Locks

IMG_0403These boats entered the lock behind us. We all were directed to the larger lock, which is 85 feet by 825 feet. The smaller lock is 30 feet by 150 feet.

"Throw me a rope."

“Throw me a rope.”

We were heading from the lower saltwater of Puget Sound into the higher freshwater leading to the lakes. The administrators of the locks are required to maintain the water level of the two lakes at 20.6 feet above mean low tide. They’re also charged with preventing the mixing of sea water and fresh.

IMG_0407Once the boats are inside the lock and tied up, the gate is closed.

IMG_0386Then fresh water from the lakes and Salmon Bay flows into the lock, and our boats begin to rise.

IMG_0408As we near the top, onlookers stare at us and we look back at them.

IMG_0415Once up to lake level, the gate opens. Then we cruise away from the Ballard Locks and under the Ballard Bridge on our way to Lake Union.

The Courage to Create

Engineers have an amazing amount of chutzpah. They aren’t the only people who dare to create of course. Creativity is all around us. Sculptors dare to make that first cut. Gardeners dig up the lawn for flowers which in the beginning only exist in their minds. Cooks try something new and serve it to their family.  Entrepreneurs  have the courage to start new businesses. Writers dare to write novels.

Here’s to us all and all the creativity we’re courageous enough to attempt.

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27 Comments

  1. wheremyfeetare

    Wow, cool to boat through the locks. And that video was amazing, I can see why engineers, especially, would want to watch it. I love getting an education from the blog community. 🙂

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      Isn’t amazing, Geralyn, how much we learn by blogging and getting to know other bloggers! Educational and fun.

      Reply
  2. Mabel Kwong

    I hope to ride along a canal like that someday. It sounds that it’s quite a sight when the water is rising and the boat goes up. Engineering, certainly a marvel of man 🙂

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      The water fills the lock so silently, you hardly know you’re rising until there you are, level with the lakes and ready to go.

      Reply
      • Mabel Kwong

        That is great the waters are so calm. No one got seasickness or motion sickness then, from the sounds of it 🙂

        Reply
        • Nicki Chen

          Nope. The whole large area (Puget Sound) is protected from the Pacific Ocean by the Olympic Peninsula.

          Reply
  3. nrhatch

    Glad you had such a gorgeous day to cruise through the lock.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      Thank you, Nancy. The breeze made a hot day perfect.

      Reply
  4. Mindy

    I remember my first time there, fascinating! Mindy

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      Because my sister has lived in Ballard since the seventies, we’ve often visited the locks and watched the boats from above. But this was only the second time I went through on a boat.

      Reply
  5. CrazyChineseFamily

    Canals are really something amazing. I’ve only been at the Kiel Canal (according to wikipedia it is the most used man made canal in thw world with roughly 32.000 ships annually. It is located very near my hometown and driving by car over the few very high bridges spanning the canal gives a wonderful view

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      Interesting! The Kiel Canal is 61 miles long, longer than the Panama Canal. Another interesting fact: There’s a lock at either end of the Kiel Canal, but there isn’t a big difference between sea-level and canal level. The main purpose of the locks is to defend the canal against the movements of the tides.

      Reply
      • CrazyChineseFamily

        I didn’t even know that the canal is longer. The west side of the canal ends in the river Elbe which itself flows in to the North Sea which has some bigger tidal movements

        Reply
  6. Carol Ferenc

    This would be so cool to experience. Who would think that engineering could be fun? Another creative endeavor that fascinates me is music. How does songwriting happen? While I love music, I can’t begin to imagine how a song is actually created.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      I suppose one reason it’s hard to imagine how people in another field create is that we’re not familiar with all the preparation and apprenticeship they go through. People who write music must have listened to and played thousands of songs written by other people before they composed their own.

      Reply
  7. Traveller at heart

    The great feel good summer……….August is for sharing the moment. Break out the sandals and T-shirts, a languid swim, watching the world go by under a sultry heaven and alfresco meals bursting with lovely, zingy flavours and peach lemonade. Heaven!

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      Traveller at heart, your praise of August is just right. Enjoy it while it lasts. Bring on the peach lemonade.

      Reply
  8. Jill Weatherholt

    This was fascinating, Nicki! I’ve always been in awe when it comes to bridge construction…the Royal Gorge Bridge…how in the heck did they do that? Great post!

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      There must be orderly steps that go into building a bridge. But what a huge task! A large bridge near here, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, is famous for collapsing. At the time it was the third largest suspension bridge in the world. But there was a problem with the harmonics, of all things. Or to be more precise: “elementary forced resonance, with the wind providing an external periodic frequency that matched the bridge’s natural structural frequency.” Even before the bridge collapsed in 1940, they were calling it Galloping Gertie. My daughter, the Structural Engineer, says that all Civil Engineering students get to watch the video. It’s amazing! Here it is.

      Reply
      • nrhatch

        I’ve seen the collapse before ~ it’s a doozy! And scary!

        Reply
        • Nicki Chen

          Watching it again, I was surprised anew at how much it twisted and swung before it collapsed.

          Reply
      • Jill Weatherholt

        Wow! Thanks for sharing the link, Nicki. My stomach felt queasy watching.

        Reply
        • Nicki Chen

          One of the strange things about that video is how composed that motorist appears to be with the bridge undulating wildly behind him.

          Reply
  9. autumnashbough

    That is very cool. I’ll have read up as to how they keep fresh and salt water from mixing.

    Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      There are a couple of ways they keep the fresh and salt water separate. It’s explained in the Wikipedia article.

      Reply
    • Nicki Chen

      “The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”

      WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

      Reply

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