Afloat on the Yellowstone Trail
November 2016

The Yellowstone Trail (YT) across Washington State offers the traveler a wonderful experience with it's unique geography. As you head west toward Seattle you are treated to the breadbasket of the state with it's wide open spaces of rich farmland. Next is the climb up and over the Cascade Range and down the steep western slope. After a day of driving the final hurdle was the 4 mile ferry trip across Lake Washington before you reached Seattle. Lake Washington is 33 square miles wide, 22 miles long and about 2 to 3 miles wide.

The ferry ride across the lake was 4 miles and took about 45 minutes. People have been using boats to cross the lake for thousands of years. The lake steamers which began in the 1870's, had been designed closely to their Puget Sound Mosquito Fleet counterparts, and would carry a mix of passengers, and freight. Some vessels could carry a horse and wagon.

By 1900 the lake was teeming with boats transporting passengers and freight across the lake. That same year, King County established a public ferry because the steamers were too small for wagons and horses, and they made too many stops along the shoreline. In 1901 the King County of Kent became the first double-ended side-wheeled ferry on the lake, and offered a direct route between Kirkland and Seattle. When the vessel was first launched it became stuck in the mud for hours with King County dignitaries onboard.

The vessel had chronic mechanical problems and was condemned in 1908. She would be replaced by the Kirkland of Washington, the first steel hulled double-ended ferry. The little steamboats now competed with the county, but one by one Captain John Anderson, an entrepreneur and an expert on operating a boat business, bought them up.

By 1908 the Anderson Steamboat Company had cornered the market on all independent boats, and Capt. Anderson had opened the Anderson Shipyard south of Kirkland. His Urania and Fortuna were the fastest boats on the lake. The county operated ferry had a regular schedule, and Capt. Anderson used this to his advantage. He'd simply show up at the public ferry dock a few minutes before the regular ferry and then scoop up the passengers and zip away.

Needless to say this did not go over well with the Port Commission. Kirkland businessmen were also upset, because of the reductions in the public ferry's receipts. The city was dependent upon their business. He was eventually banned from using the Kirkland Dock. By 1922 the county ferry system was in such financial difficulty that it appointed its largest competitor to run the system, Captain John Anderson.

In 1913, Capt. Anderson drastically modified the deck of his steamboat Urania to accommodate four automobiles, but this method was unwieldy and highly inefficient. As with the horse and wagon, it was clear that the old-style steamboat days on Lake Washington were fading, and it was time for a new design. The era of the double-ended ferry had arrived. In 1913 a reconfigured side-wheeler steamboat, the wooden Leschi, became the first Seattle built automobile ferry. This ferry first operated on the Kirkland-Leschi run.

On March 25,1915 the S.S. Lincoln of Kirkland began its Kirkland to Madison Park (Seattle) run. For 25 years the Lincoln plied the waters between Kirkland and Seattle and never had an accident nor a mechanical breakdown. The vessel was built in 1914 at the Anderson Shipyard. The Lincoln at the time was the largest ferry built for the lake crossing. She weighed in at 580 tons and was 150ft long and could carry about 40 autos. The fare was 25 cents for auto and driver and 6 cents for a walk on passenger.

On August 25, 1916 the Lake Washington Ship Canal was completed and subsequently the lake was lowered 9 feet. Now boats are able to travel from Lake Washington to Lake Union and then to Puget Sound. In 1919 there was a proposal to change the route of the ferry from Madison Park to South Lake Union through the Montlake cut. This was to shorten the time it took travelers to reach downtown Seattle. This proposal never went anywhere but if it did, the Yellowstone trail most likely would have been rerouted to South Lake Union along with the ferry.

Bandits Onboard

Those 25 years were not completely uneventful. If you were aboard on November 24, 1919 it would be a different story. At 5:45am Monday morning as the Lincoln was leaving the Madison St. dock, two men named Letsley and Christianson came alongside the ferry in a rowboat and quickly boarded it. They quietly made their way to the engine room where they bound and gagged the engineer. The engineer was told about the planned robbery beforehand, and quietly submitted to being gagged. (More on that later.) After grabbing an ax the crooks headed for the purser's office. They then smashed open the door with the ax, grabbed the safe and took it to the main deck.

They were unable to open the safe, so one of the men went back to the engine room for a crowbar. During the rush to open the safe they were unaware that they were about to be caught in the act. The previous night at a bar in Seattle the men had confided in two women about their plans to rob the ferry and then Kirkland bank. The women informed the Seattle Police Chief who then early Monday morning drove the detectives down to catch the ferry. They boarded the ferry at 3:00am, and Yoris and Cochran stationed themselves in the pilothouse, and Frank stayed on deck to await their approach. The engineer was informed and told to submit to the crooks.

When the robbers began to open the safe with the crowbar the detectives closed in on them. "Throw up your hands!" shouted the detectives. Letsley and Christianson dropped the crowbar and fled. Yoris, armed with a sawed-off shotgun, fired at Letsley and he dropped with three buckshot in his left arm and two in his face. Christianson fled down the deck, pursued by Cochran and Frank. Two shots from the detectives' guns caused Christianson to drop to the deck, where he lay motionless.

With their guns trained on what they believed to be a wounded man. the detectives advanced, fearing Christianson might be playing possum. "I am thru!" Christianson yelled as the detectives turned him over to look for wounds. An hour later Christianson was in the city jail and Letsley was in the city hospital. It must have been an exciting and scary ferry ride for the passengers.

Where's My Truck?

Another incident on the ferry occurred in 1934. This is when a driver from "Moffit's" big hog farm, which was located east of Kirkland, had driven aboard. When driver got out of his truck to get a cup of coffee, he neglected to set the parking brake. That day the lake was covered in thick fog making visibility difficult. When the ferry reached the center of the lake, the Captain saw something in the water and quickly reversed engines.

The driver had not yet returned when the Captain reversed the engines, which caused the truck to jump the tire blocks and roll off the end of the boat and into the deepest part of the lake. "It made no noise and nobody knew anything had happened until the driver returned and asked, "Where's my truck?" It took three weeks for a diver to locate the sunken truck.

Bridging the Lake

As cross lake travel increased, talk of bridging the lake began to be discussed. In 1921 the Bellevue District Club held a meeting under the leadership of M. Reese, and the residents of Bellevue began to organize for a fight for a bridge which would link their new town with the Yellowstone Trail, and shorten the trip to Seattle over this new highway. R. R. Montell and John H. Dirkes, engineers, explained how a bridge could be constructed at a cost of less than $250,000 by utilizing a dozen of the wooden hulls, which were lying in Lake Union. They would be linked together end to end over the lake and a platform for autos to drive over would be built on top.

The engineers explained that besides shortening the Yellowstone Trail, the proposed bridge would make the trip from Seattle to Issaquah five miles shorter than the route through Renton. By the early 1920's drivers now had three routes to choose from between Seattle and Issaquah; 1. The Renton route around the south end; 2. The ferry across Lake Washington; or 3. The new route around the north end of the lake through Bothell.

With the opening of the Lake Washington Floating Bridge in 1940 motorists now had a direct route across the lake, and so began the demise of the ferries. The bridge required a toll which still made the ferries a viable option. But when the tolls ended in 1950 so did the ferries.

The old ferry dock which was big enough to handle cars and trucks is long gone, and the place is now called Marina Park, and forms the heart of Kirkland's waterfront. The clock which told commuters how long they had to catch the ferry still stands at the intersection of Kirkland Avenue and Lake Street.