Seattle - Fremont Cut from Eliza Ferry Leary House 01

The Fremont Cut is a

canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface flo ...

Seattle, Washington Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest region ...

, United States, that connects Lake Union to the east with

Salmon Bay Salmon Bay is a portion of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, which passes through the city of Seattle, linking Lake Washington to Puget Sound, lying west of the Fremont Cut. It is the westernmost section of the canal and empties into Puget Sound' ...

to the west. It is part of the Lake Washington Ship Canal linking Lake Washington to

Puget Sound Puget Sound ( ) is a sound of the Pacific Northwest, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and part of the Salish Sea. It is located along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected ma ...

, and is long and wide. The center channel is wide and deep.

History

Work first began on the cut when the Lake Washington Improvement Company contracted in 1883 to dig out Ross Creek which at that time was Lake Union’s fresh water outlet to Salmon Bay. The total amount of material excavated was about 2 million cubic yards. Up until the Chittenden Locks were completed in 1917, the Fremont Cut’s eastern end near the Fremont Bridge was separated from Lake Union by a low wooden dam, a small wooden lock, and a spillway.

Environs

Named for the neighborhood lying just to the north, the cut is spanned by the

Fremont Bridge Fremont Bridge may refer to: * Fremont Bridge (Portland, Oregon) * Fremont Bridge (Seattle) The Fremont Bridge is a double-leaf bascule bridge that spans the Fremont Cut in Seattle, Washington. The bridge, which connects Fremont Avenue North an ...

, a bascule drawbridge that connects Fremont with Queen Anne to the south via Fremont Avenue North. South of the cut is the 456’ high Queen Anne Hill while to the east is the Aurora Bridge (officially the George Washington Memorial Bridge), a cantilever truss, suspension structure that carries old

US 99 U.S. Route 99 (US 99) was a main north–south United States Numbered Highway on the West Coast of the United States until 1964, running from Calexico, California, on the US–Mexico border to Blaine, Washington, on the U.S.-Canada borde ...

(Pacific Highway) over the west end of Lake Union. Various high tech companies are located just north of the cut in the Fremont area, notably Adobe Systems,

Tableau Software Tableau Software ( ) is an American interactive data visualization software company focused on business intelligence. It was founded in 2003 in Mountain View, California, and is currently headquartered in Seattle, Washington. In 2019 the comp ...

and

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

References

{{Lake Washington Ship Canal Buildings and structures in Seattle Water transport in Seattle

Cut Cut may refer to: Common uses * The act of cutting, the separation of an object into two through acutely-directed force ** A type of wound ** Cut (archaeology), a hole dug in the past ** Cut (clothing), the style or shape of a garment ** Cut (ea ...