- There's a mysterious object on the bottom of Lake Washington,
as wide as a football field and resting not far north of the State Route
520 floating bridge.
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- It's 200 feet down in cold, dark muck, unseen for generations.
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- Nessie on a vacation? A crashed UFO? A Spanish galleon
with enough doubloons aboard to pay for the new bridge?
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- Beginning today, a team of investigators hired by the
state will dive to the lake bottom to find out just what it is, and whether
the state could or should move it.
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- The mystery object -- as long as 160 feet -- was one
of three unexpected silhouettes that turned up on sonar scans in July.
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- Two of the three, the state believes, are sunken barges.
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- Preliminary work on the third was inconclusive, said
Julie Meredith, project manager for a new SR 520 bridge.
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- It might be a large boat.
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- ``Most of what we could see was an old wooden structure
that was deteriorating,'' she said after viewing sonar scans and rough
video footage.
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- It's unknown how old the barges or mystery object might
be, Meredith said.
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- ``If they are of any archeological significance, we'd
like to identify that up front,'' she said. ``One person's old deteriorating
structure could be very important to someone else.''
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- Consultants Golder and Associates are the international
underwater sleuths hired for the task.
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- ``We've got archeologists to figure out whether we need
to save it or if it's environmentally or historically important,'' said
Jamie Holter, state Department of Transportation spokeswoman.
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- All this is necessary because the DOT is worried. A replacement
floating bridge -- to be built when the state comes up with $2 billion
or more -- will be tied to the lake bottom with long anchor cables, and
the mystery object might be in the way during construction.
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- It's lucky that's all the state found in the way. It
could have been much worse.
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- Lake Washington has a long history as a burial ground,
said Rick Hansen, manager of Puyallup-based Maritime Consultants.
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- ``There's railroad cars, timber on the north end of the
lake, and some airplanes people pay pretty big money for, but they're Naval
aircraft and the Navy doesn't give up rights to those,'' Hansen said.
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- Some planes still sit temptingly on the bottom, perfectly
preserved in fresh water.
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- Lake Washington is cold, dark and murky, offering none
of the interesting colors or sea life Puget Sound.
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- ``It's mostly muck,'' Hansen said. ``You maybe have 2
feet to 8 feet of visibility, which is not very much.''
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- Hansen is also vice-president of both of the world's
shipwreck groups, Shiprex International Inc. and PROSEA, Professional Shipwrecks
Explorers Association.
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- Could the mystery object be an important key to the lake's
past?
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- Hansen's instincts tell him not to get his hopes up.
His notes and a phone call gave him less hope.
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- There were shipyards north of Webster's Point near the
dive site, and barges and old hulks were regularly stripped and sunk, sometimes
even burned, Hansen said.
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- ``There would be no ship's bell, and you're not going
to read any identifying mark,'' Hansen said. ``The paint's probably gone.
It would be just a hulk with whole bunch of mud and muck around it.''
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- Still, there's hope.
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- ``If it is an unknown, there's the excitement of creating
history or knowledge, and that does pique my curiosity,'' Hansen said.
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- ``Wouldn't it be neat if it was something really significant?''
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- Officials will investigate one object each day through
Friday and issue a report within a month.
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- Jeff Switzer can be reached at jeff.switzer@kingcountyjournal.com
or 425-453- 4234.
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- SECRETS FROM THE DEEP
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- Items discovered in the murky depths of Lake Washington
include:
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- * Two World War II Corsair fighter planes (1983, 1984);
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- * 18 wooden coal cars that fell off a barge in 1875;
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- * A 100-pound bomb (1986);
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- * An 11-foot sturgeon weighing as much as 2,000 pounds
was found floating in the north end of the lake in 1987;
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- * A late-1940s Republic Seabee (1991);
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- * Two Curtiss SB2C Helldivers and two Grumann F4F Wildcat
fighters (1987);
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- * Ancient forests slid into the lake off the southwest
shore of Mercer Island about 1,000 years ago in a massive landslide, possibly
caused by an earthquake.
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- http://www.kingcountyjournal.com/sited/story/html/146723
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