By 1914 one thing was obvious to most: The automobile was here to stay.

Good roads became a popular cause on the Eastside and elsewhere, but the automobile also meant changes in how Kirklanders crossed Lake Washington. Previously, most lake steamers had been designed similarly to their Puget Sound “Mosquito Fleet” counterparts and would carry a mix of foot passengers and freight, lashing a buckboard and team to the deck if necessary.

In 1913, Captain John Anderson drastically modified the deck of his steamboat Urania to accommodate four horseless carriages parked perpendicular to the deck, but this method was unwieldy and highly inefficient.

As with the horse and wagon, it was clear that the old-style steamboat’s days on Lake Washington were fading and it was time for a new design. The era of the double-ended ferry had arrived.

The first Lake Washington double-ended ferry was the “jinxed” King County of Kent, inauspiciously launched full of dignitaries at Madison Park in 1901 and immediately stuck in the mud for hours.

That problem-plagued vessel was condemned in 1908.In addition to operating commercial vessels on the lake, Captain Anderson owned the Lake Washington Shipyards in Houghton, at the site of today’s Carillon Point development, and  King County contracted with him to construct double enders.

First built was the Issaquah, launched in March of 1914 and put on the Leschi-Newport run, but only operated on the lake until 1918 when it was sold to California interests and moved to San Francisco Bay.

In November, 1914, the renowned Pacific Northwest photographer Darius Kinsey visited the yard and captured this image of the diminutive steamboat Dawn and double ender Lincoln on the ways.

The 55 foot Dawn was outfitted with machinery from the old dismantled steamer Xanthus and placed on the west Mercer Island run until its dryrot induced its 1938 retirement.

The Lincoln of Kirkland was 147.3 feet long with a 43 foot beam, displacing 540 tons with a triple expansion steam engine with a low pressure cylinder over six feet in diameter.

The Lincoln was the second Pacific Northwest-built double ended ferry constructed with a steel hull and Kirkland then did not have any steelworkers, so Anderson had to shuttle some over from Madison Park in the passenger boat Triton. The Lincoln was launched on Dec. 2, 1914 and took the Kirkland-Madison Park run.

It was a fairly trouble-free boat and well liked by Kirklanders.

In 1925, two gun-wielding men gagged the engineer with his own socks, bound him and robbed the purser’s safe. They were never caught.

During the 1930s a truck carrying slop for a Kirkland hog ranch rolled off the deck into about 200 feet of water, later recovered by a hardhat diver.

When the Mercer Island floating bridge opened in 1940 the Lincoln was finally pulled from the Kirkland run and replaced by the smaller Leschi.

The Lincoln was idle until 1948 when King County placed it on the Fauntleroy-Vashon run until 1951. Though it was transferred to the State of Washington after it created its ferry system the state never used Kirkland’s old friend. The Lincoln was stored at Rainer Beach until being dismantled in 1954.

Matthew McCauley is a third-generation Kirklander and author of “A Look To The Past: Kirkland.” He is also a Kirkland Heritage Society board member.