Happy birthday to Ballard Locks!
Crowded Ballard Locks, circa 1960. (Photo courtesy Washington State Archives.) Whether you know the man-made channel connecting the saltwater of Puget Sound with the freshwater of Lake Union and Lake Washington as the Lake Washington Ship Canal, Ballard Locks, or the formal Hiram Chittenden Locks, the history is the same. One of the Northwest’s best-known pioneers, Thomas Mercer, suggested in 1854 to connect the region’s natural bodies of water on the newly established community’s first Independence Day celebration. Mercer declared Tenas…