The Last of the Portage Bay Log Booms

Written May 14, 2022 

Sofie Sarah Frye Bass was born in 1867 and was witness to much of Seattle’s earliest days.  Since she was a granddaughter of Seattle Founder, Arthur Denny, she was well connected, knew everyone in town worth knowing and probably was all up in everybody’s business.  By recording her observations, she brought to us some of the most revealing yet brief vignettes of life in early Seattle.  Her descriptions of growing up in the places we grew up in and where we walk today sometimes tell of great change and other times paint pictures of folks doing the same things that we did at the same places. 

In her book “When Seattle Was a Village” she talks about picnicking at the log canal at The Portage.  She says…….”Logs were then run through this channel.  We liked to picnic at the canal and watch logs float into the booms at Portage Bay, and when no one was looking, we ran and played tag on the logs”.  

1895 – MOHAI – Sophie and Her Sisters

The Log Canal opened in 1885 and was quite the destination.  It remained so for the 30 years that followed.  By 1900 or so the Seattle Street system had developed to the point to where overland transportation wasn’t such an adventure but when the canal first opened getting there required an arduous trip by horseback or wagon over the few existing rough and winding roads, or, a viable and probably better option would have been to hire one of the few Duwamish natives remaining in town to take you by canoe.  These natives knew the lakes well and had been traveling to “The Portage” for thousands of years. 

Cheshiahud was a Duwamish native and a Denny family friend who had recently returned to the Portage Bay area from Mercer Slough following the death of his first wife.  David Denny bequeathed him some land on Portage Bay where he built a cabin and got busy making a life for himself.  One of his means of getting by was running a transportation service for folks around the system of local lakes.  Sort of an Uber Ancestor, I guess. 

C1885 – MOHAI – SHS 2228 - Cheshiahud

In 1885 I picture Sophie and her family traveling by wagon from their Pike Street home to south Lake Union where they would meet their friend, Cheshiahud.  After exchanging pleasant greetings, they would climb aboard his dugout and start north.  Nearing Brooklyn they would round the point and turn back south towards the outlet of the Log Canal.  In the distance a line of pilings stretched across the foot of the bay securing boom sticks that captured the logs arriving through the flume.  As they drew nearer, they could see collections of floating logs boomed up in organized batches while smaller booms close to the canal outlet awaited sorting.  The shoreline in the vicinity of the canal was rough and much of it was forested right down to the water’s edge.  Some closely organized pilings stretched out from shore in lines; artifacts of the coal transport industry.

C1903 - DorpatSherrardLomont

Looking ENE at Portage Bay from Capitol Hill

It was here that the family would spread their blanket to share a meal and if there were easily accessible log booms and no one was watching Sophie and her siblings would use a game of tag as their excuse to run on the logs.  If there weren’t good opportunities on this end of the canal there were always larger, more accessible logs booms at the inlet on Union Bay less than 500 yards to the east.  

C1890 – University of Washington Digital Collections – Log Canal Inlet

Looking NE across Union Bay with the town of Yesler in the background

When the Log Canal dried up with the lowering of Lake Washington the south end of Portage Bay was still used for some log storage.  In the 1950’s, at the beginning of my log boom days, I danced across the bobbing, turning, slippery logs certain that I was experiencing something that nobody else had ever considered.  Some booms came and went and were often stored against The Swamp between the clusters of houseboats.  During the late 1950’s and early 1960’s there were plenty of easily accessible logs boomed up to play on.  As late as 1963 when the 520 Viaduct was well under construction a decent sized collection of logs had been gathered up and tucked up next to the Bureau of Fisheries and the Fisheries employees never chased us away.  Eventually, though, all but a few forgotten, solitary logs had been towed away or left to decay.  

1962 – Seattle Municipal Archives – 71028

Now on Winter days when the lake level is drawn down you can still find the top of a single piling stretching up for some of that low-angle sunlight at the very edge of the Fisheries parking lot and a few of old grizzled logs tight up against the shoreline by Montlake Playfield.  The chain coupler that joined them was failing over 20 years ago and someone has made a point of keeping them tied together for the past 30 years so that they wouldn’t become navigation hazards. 

The last of the Portage Bay Log booms?

The more I read the vignettes that Sophie and Bill Bellman left us the more I realize that I didn’t have a clue and probably never had a single original thought about how to maximize fun in my Montlake surroundings.