Waymakers on the Water: A Story of Puget Sound's Maritime Highway

Puget Sound and the Salish Sea of the Pacific Northwest have been a vital maritime highway, connecting areas that are now the present day cities of Seattle, Tacoma, Bremerton and Olympia. For over ten thousand years, this largest estuary in the continental United States by volume, was the exclusive domain of the indigenous Coastal Salish tribes. The tribes were skilled carvers of canoes from carefully selected, old growth Western Red Cedar logs. Dense forests were everywhere in the Puget Sound region, so travel by water was the best choice for fishing, hunting and maintaining extensive native trading networks. Indigenous history and skills are a major part of Washington history. Pacific Northwest history took a new turn with the arrival of Europeans starting in the late 18th century, navigation expanded to include sail and oar driven vessels, and then steam. The first steamboat on the Pacific Coast was Hudson’s Bay Company’s SS Beaver arriving in 1836 at Fort Vancouver, and then transferred to Fort Nisqually. The latter half of the 1800’s saw a rapid expansion of privately operated steam passenger and freight service, growing into what affectionately became know as “the Mosquito Fleet.” Daring steamboat captains connected far-flung communities in the Puget Sound region through the decades when roads were scarce in this rugged region. Eventually the Mosquito Fleet days came to an end with expansion of railroads followed by bridges and highways. Where once, hundreds of Mosquito Fleet steamers plied the inland waters of Western Washington, now only two remain : the SS Virginia V, based on Lake Union in Seattle, and MV Carlisle II, operating daily between Port Orchard and Bremerton, Washington, essentially continually since 1917. Learn more about the growth of transportation in the Puget Sound region and steamers like the Fairy and the Flyer, the Puget Sound Navigation Company and Black Ball Line which eventually became the Washington State Ferry System. Produced for KBTC TV PBS, www.kbtc.org by North Woods Productions, www.northwoodsproductions.com