The history of Lake Washington is often shaped by natural disasters but human tragedy also shapes the lake. Contained in the lake are bits of history known only to a few adventurous explorers. Aided with high-tech equipment UAS has located a train of coal cars lost to the lake in 1875.

The train belonged to the Seattle Coal & Transportation Company, one of the early local business enterprises that succeeded in putting Seattle and the eastside on the map. In the fall of 1863, surveyor Edwin Richardson discovered coal beside a stream later named Coal Creek. Wagons hauled sacks of coal down to the lake where it was transported to the west shore by sail boat, rowboat, or Indian canoe. Six weeks later, prospectors discovered a richer coal seam south of the Creek at a place called Newcastle, named after the famous English mining town. To bring the coal form Newcastle to Seattle, the company constructed a cumbersome system of tramways and barges to haul trains of iron-wheeled wooden cars. Each cart was capable of carrying two tons of coal from the mines to bunkers on the Seattle waterfront. In January 1875, the sternwheeler Chehalis was rounding the northwest point of Mercer Island when a gale blowing from the south tipped the barge it was towing and sent 18 cars plunging into the lake. They remain where they sank, well preserved in 200 feet of water, many of them upright and still carrying their cargoes of coal.

i also remember reading years ago in some Ohio historical magazine that a RR car ferry in the early 1900's loaded with RR cars sunk during a storm after i think leaving Conneaut? It mentioned the payroll safe was also on board the ferry.The wreck was supposedly never found and after it happened dead bodies of the crew on board the ferry washed up on both the sides of the Lake,hard to say where that wreck is!