It all started in 1854, when Thomas Mercer stood on a table and declared there should be a connection between Lake Washington and the Puget Sound.

“There was a need for commercial traffic (to be able to get through),” Brian Carter, natural resource specialist at the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, said.

Several attempts to get a canal in place popped up over the next few decades — with one resident going so far as to start chipping away at the ground in vain with a pickaxe and shovel — but nothing came to fruition until 1910, when the funding for the Lake Washington Ship Canal was approved.

In 1915, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers started building the Lake Washington Ship Canal and the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, also known as the Ballard Locks. They started lowering Lake Washington on Aug. 25, 1916, and 100 years later, the effects are still felt by the communities around the lake, which was lowered nine feet by the time the project finished.

“Wherever the roads go, history follows,” Carter said, adding the canal is like one big road leading from the Puget Sound through Lake Union to Lake Washington.

Approximately 50,000 vessels pass through the locks every year, according to Bill Dowell, spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers Seattle District.

Officials in the Eastside cities surrounding Lake Washington cite its lowering as one of the key reasons why they exist and have flourished.

“There would be no Kirkland without the canal,” Loita Hawkinson, past president of the Kirkland Heritage Society, said. “The canal is the reason why Kirkland was founded.”

When the funds for a canal were appropriated in 1888, Peter Kirk and Leigh S.J. Hunt decided to build a steel mill in Kirkland and had the town platted, according to Hawkinson, but the funding for that project never came through and the mill was never built.

When the project finally started picking up steam about 20 years later, locals also were encouraged by the idea of the controlled water level, as it would mean less flooding in the area.

“Everywhere was able to develop because they didn’t have to worry about being flooded,” Hawkinson said.

From 1906 to 1915, the Kirkland population grew from 500 to 10,000, according to information from the Kirkland Heritage Society.

Eric Shields, city planner in Kirkland, said the land the lowering of the lake uncovered on the city’s coast is worth hundreds of millions of dollars today. The benefits to Kirkland and the surrounding area are so numerous that it would be hard to imagine what it would be like if the canal hadn’t been built, he said.

One Kirkland resident who paid a $300 downpayment on waterfront property a few years prior was reportedly turning down offers upwards of $8,000 in cash by 1919.

“Everything downtown was 100-percent underwater (before the lowering),” Hawkinson said.

Having purchased Kirk Development Company from Peter Kirk in 1910 and expecting that Kirkland would grow, businessmen E.C. Burke and Bert Farrar began scooping up property. Nearly 90 percent of the new residents in the coming years would purchase their land from the pair, who became very successful and wealthy.

“A prominent Bellevue resident remarked that Bellevue would have outgrown Kirkland had it a concern like Burke and Farrar to build people to the community and build them homes. As it is, Bellevue is a shorter distance from Seattle, claimed superiority of soil and its beautiful location is only a hamlet, while Kirkland is assuming the airs of a city,” one newspaper reported.

That soil quality and new access to the Puget Sound led to an economic boom in Bellevue.

The lowering of Lake Washington caused the Mercer Slough to drop and the demise of the once-successful Hewitt-Lea Lumber Company that relied on it to float logs downstream.

However, the newly exposed land was fertile and the area soon became sought-after farmland.

Around that time, the flounder deep-sea whaling industry was transferring to “shore-whaling,” which found a home in the Puget Sound region. Industry articles also stated that the opening of the Lake Washington canal would greatly benefit the fishing industry.

Given the saltwater access ferried by the canal, William Schupp started a whaling fleet, which he chose to moor in Bellevue’s Meydenbauer Bay. The Lake Washington Shipyard established shortly thereafter in Kirkland found itself with a great deal of business.

In Kenmore, City Manager Rob Karlinsey said both the economic and recreational opportunities for the city have greatly increased over the last century due to the project.

“It has created a lot of access to the water,” he said.

He specifically cited the Squire’s Landing Park, Log Boom Park and parts of Rhododendron Park as recreational areas that wouldn’t be there if Lake Washington hadn’t been lowered. He also added the creation of the canal and locks allowed residents around the lake to be able to venture out to the Puget Sound on their personal boats.

On the business side, Karlinsey said the locks were very beneficial in getting supplies to the Kenmore Industrial Park to build the State Route 520 bridge.

Of course, the effects of lowering Lake Washington aren’t all positive. It drained the Black River, which was a lifeline for the Native Americans living in the area and an economic and recreational resource for Renton residents.

Prior to the construction of the canal, many local officials and businessmen had developed grand plans for the river, according to Renton History Museum Director Elizabeth Stewart. The waterfront would be developed, a ferry company was proposed and business owners being planning for industrial barges to bring the many goods manufactured in Renton to Seattle markets.

Ferry Fay Burrows had opened a successful fishing resort on the river, catering to men from Seattle and elsewhere who were looking for a retreat. As the river dried up over the three months following the canal’s construction, so did his business and other plans for Renton.

“The disappearance of the Black River was really a reality check … It really changed the landscape of economic expectations along South Lake Washington,” Stewart said.

In Juanita, the ferry that transported residents had to cease operations as the water was now too shallow in certain areas, Hawkinson said.

While the region has changed significantly in the last century, its ripples have not been ignored.

Beginning five years ago, Bellevue School District students began examining the impact of the canal in a special workshop developed by the district and the Eastside Heritage Center. The seventh graders read about the benefits and costs of the project and its effect on a dozen people, including Schupp, Burrows, and Burke and Farrar.

Some teachers have the teens simulate a council meeting to debate the canal. They are asked, “With what we know now, would you make the same decision?”

It is impossible to know what would’ve happened to the area had the canal not been built. There’s no guarantee that Renton’s waterway plans would have been successful, for example, as Americans moved away from traveling on rivers in favor of railroads, according to Stewart.

Regardless, the ship canal and subsequent changes to Lake Washington changed the course of local history. Local historian Jennifer Ott has said that “the construction of the Lake Washington Ship Canal has been the most important human factor to ever affect the lake and its shorelands.”

More information about the locks and the lakes can be found at makingthecut100.org, a website dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the project sponsored by a variety of local organizations, individuals and institutions. The website will be regularly updated with a listing of events to commemorate the entire project, which was completed on July 4, 1917.

Bellevue Reporter staff writer Allison DeAngelis also contributed to this report.