Every Lake
Lake Washington
The long glacial trough that Seattle grew up around, with Mercer Island floating in the middle.
- 36 ft · first step
- 71 ft
- 107 ft
- 143 ft
- 178 ft
- 214 ft · bottom
About Lake Washington
Lake Washington is the second-largest natural lake in the state, a twenty-two-mile ribbon between Seattle and the Eastside carved by the Puget lobe of the last ice sheet and filled to 214 feet at its deepest. Mercer Island sits in its southern half; the two floating bridges that cross it are among the longest of their kind in the world, and the lake is why Seattle commutes the way it does.
The shoreline runs from Laurelhurst and Madison Park through Medina, Hunts Point and Yarrow Point — some of the most expensive waterfront in America — down to Renton at the south end. In the 1960s the lake was famously rescued from decades of sewage with a regional cleanup that is still taught as the textbook case of a big lake brought back.
- 24 shore towns named, with a star on each
- 17,628 roads engraved around the shore, 5 of them labeled
- 6 depth layers, each step engraved with its depth in feet
- Compass rose, title block with coordinates, max depth and area; keyhole hanger on the back
Turn it in your hands
Live 3D of the actual cut files — drag to orbit, pinch to zoom. Every road you see is engraved on the real thing.
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