An engineering marvel in Seattle: Touring the Ballard Locks and fish ladder

SEATTLE, Washington – If you’re the type of traveler who likes to see how things work, there’s an engineering marvel that you should add to your list of must-see attractions in Seattle.

The Hiram H. Chittenden Locks, more commonly called the Ballard Locks, were created in 1917, part of the Lake Washington Ship Canal that connects inland lakes Washington and Union with the Puget Sound and Pacific Ocean.

The canal, built between 1911 and 1934, was conceived primarily to speed up the transportation of goods – timber, mostly — from areas east of Seattle to the ocean.

The locks were an essential part of the plan because Lake Washington, on the east side of Seattle, is as many as 26 feet higher than the Puget Sound, depending on tides.

We have locks in Ohio, too, including some that you can travel through on tourism boats — aboard the Valley Gem on the Muskingum River, for example, or at Providence Metropark in Grand Rapids on the Miami and Erie Canal.

But there’s nothing to this scale.

Named after an engineer who played a key role in their development, the Chittenden Locks are the busiest in the country, with as many as 50,000 vessels passing through each year.

Locals typically call them the Ballard Locks, because of their location within Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood, northwest of downtown.

The facility features two side-by-side locks, including a “large lock,” 80 feet wide by 825 feet long; and a “small lock,” 30 feet wide by 150 feet long.

Tasha Cameron, a park ranger with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said the locks are busiest from Memorial Day through Labor Day. But they’re open 24 hours a day, year-round, and see boat traffic every day.

“I always say, just wait 15 minutes and you’ll see something new,” she said.

They work like this: Boaters traveling inland enter the lock when the water level is low. After the gates shut behind them, water flows into the lock via a series of underground tunnels. The lock, filling with water, acts like an elevator, raising the boat as much as 27 feet. After the boat is raised, a second set of gates open and the vessel continues on its way.

Boats headed toward the ocean — from fishing fleets to small cruise ships to kayaks — get lowered in the same way.

The entire experience takes anywhere from 12 to 15 minutes and uses between 500,000 gallons of water (in the small lock) to 8 million gallons (in the large one). Boaters are not charged for the ride.

Visitors can walk across the infrastructure, from one side of the shipping canal to the other, watching as the lock gates open and close, seeing boats enter and exit, and observing as the locks fill up and empty.

On the south side of the canal is another engineering feat: a fish ladder that allows migrating salmon to swim around the locks.

The Army Corps of Engineers constructed the initial ladder in 1916, consisting of 10 steps. Sixty years later, in 1976, the original ladder was replaced with a 21-step version, complete with a visitors viewing gallery.

Time your visit right, and you can see one of four types of salmon — sockeye, chinook, coho and steelhead – jump up the ladder rungs, after years in the ocean, en route back to the stream or hatchery where they were born.

On the north side of the locks is a visitor center, in a former blacksmith’s shop, which chronicles the history of the site, surrounded by the 7-acre Carl S. English Jr. Botanical Garden.

The locks and the garden are free. The grounds are open daily, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. The visitor center is open 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, October through April and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. May through September. There is paid parking on both sides of the lock.

More information: ballardlocks.org

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