The story of Lake Washington’s first floating bridge begins with a man shaving. 

Homer M. Hadley, a 34-year-old civil engineer, had spent years thinking about what he considered one of the biggest engineering challenges around the Northwest—how to bridge vast, deep, muddy Lake Washington, bringing the bounty of the Eastside to the budding metropolis of Seattle. Then, as he was passing a razor over his stubbled face one morning, it came to him.

Hadley already understood something the average citizen didn’t: concrete floats. That morning in 1920, he thought back to his work for the Emergency Fleet Corporation during the Great War. Steel shortages had forced the government to get creative, which sometimes meant making barges out of reinforced concrete. Sure, the barges were heavier than steel ships, but they stayed afloat. In seconds, Hadley’s mind flashed upon a solution. Why not string a series of concrete barges from the western shore of the lake to Mercer Island to form a floating bridge?

Excited, Hadley began drawing up a design. Little did he know that it would take two decades, a Great Depression, and Edward R. Murrow’s brother to make his plans a reality. And little did he know the extent to which those plans would fundamentally remake the Eastside—and the region as a whole.

Back in 1920 the Eastside was hardly the robust set of suburbs it is today. It was better known for chickens and strawberry farms. But Seattle, then in the midst of a population boom, badly needed its fresh produce. Regular ferry service across the lake had been going since the 1880s, but a trip into the city and back could take a whole day. You could drive all the way around Renton if you wanted, but it wasn’t exactly efficient.   

Pontoon bridges—bridges made of boats or floats—had been around since antiquity, but there had never before been one made out of concrete. Hadley’s plan was designed to suit the unique problems of Lake Washington. Carved by a glacier thousands of years ago, the lake is miles across and about 214 feet at its deepest point. Beneath it lies another 100–200 feet of squishy clay and mud. It’s not the kind of floor you can sink pilings into very easily—or at all.   

In October 1921, Hadley formally proposed his idea for a floating bridge at a meeting of the American Society of Civil Engineers. But the public—and the bankers Hadley needed to fund his plan—didn’t exactly take to it. 

“I talked to James D. Hogue, Seattle capitalist, about my idea but he…looked on me as a screwball,” Hadley later told The Seattle Times. Critics dubbed the plan “Hadley’s Folly.” People thought a floating bridge made from concrete would surely sink.

For a while, it seemed Hadley’s idea surely had.

Other plans for a bridge came and went. One of the earliest meant to make multiple bridges out of war-surplus wooden vessels sitting derelict in Lake Union. But the high costs of building and maintenance cast a pall over the proposal. Later plans also ran into trouble, especially when it became unclear whether the City of Seattle had jurisdiction over Lake Washington at all. 

And the critics of any plan for a bridge multiplied. The navy was against it, arguing it would interfere with seaplanes coming from Naval Station Puget Sound at Sand Point. Preservationists thought that any structure across the lake’s blue depths would ruin its scenic beauty. The Seattle Times was among the loudest of these voices. One 1930 editorial, printed in a black box on the front page, said the city council was trying to “destroy” the lake. It ended: “In the name of common sense, PREVENT THIS WANTON DESTRUCTION!”

The Times needn’t have been so loud. The Great Depression would soon put all bridge talk on ice. But the Depression also brought about the New Deal, which included the creation of Public Works Administration funding for major infrastructure projects.

Something else changed in the ’30s. In 1937, the Washington State Legislature established the Washington Toll Bridge Authority, giving it the sole power to build any bridge across any body of water in the state. Previous plans locating authority for a bridge across Lake Washington in Seattle or King County had run into confusing snags. Now, it was clear how to get the ball rolling.

Meanwhile, the Eastside had been changing, too. Aside from berry farms, most activity was concentrated on the shipyards at Houghton (now part of Kirkland). The shipyards had gained fame as the birthplace of the aerodynamic ferry the MV Kalakala, then earned two contracts with the US Coast and Geodetic Survey to build oceanographic charting vessels. With World War II on the horizon, the shipyards began to mobilize, bringing workers and their families to the Eastside. Soon, it became clear the region just couldn’t survive without a span across the lake.

When Hadley learned the Washington Toll Bridge Authority was planning to survey the area for the best place to site the bridge, he saw his chance. He approached state highway director Lacey V. Murrow—Edward R. Murrow’s older brother and a future air force brigadier general. Hadley explained that he’d already found the narrowest part of the Mt. Baker Ridge, potentially saving millions when it came time to build the tunnel approach to the lake.       

Murrow was on board. And when he ordered his staff to assess Hadley’s plan, they were, too. But there was a complication. By then, Hadley worked for the Portland Cement Association, a nonprofit whose motto was “to extend and promote the uses of concrete.” If Hadley was prominently involved with the bridge, the whole thing might just look like a plum gig for his client. Murrow encouraged Hadley to take a back seat, promising him he’d get credit eventually.

Construction broke ground on December 29, 1938, funded by $3.8 million in Public Works Administration money and a bond of $5.5 million, to be repaid by tolls. When the bridge finally opened on July 2, 1940, before a joyful crowd of 3,000, Hadley appeared in the official booklet only as one of the more than 100 members of the “Dedication Committee.” But his foresight had borne fruit: The bridge was up, and it was the largest floating anything of its time. 

Around 12,000 vehicles crossed the first day. A trip to the Eastside now took only about 15 minutes, and soon real estate brochures trumpeted lines like “Over the Bridge to Gracious Living.” Eastside acres that had once been devoted to grazing livestock were transformed into homes and shopping centers. With a plethora of cheap land and, soon enough, a swell of returning GIs, the subdivisions bloomed. It took only six years for the first tenants of Bellevue Square to open up.

In 1963, the original Evergreen Point Floating Bridge opened between Seattle and Bellevue. And in 1989, a third floating bridge was laid across the lake carrying I-90’s westbound traffic and lanes that reversed during rush hour. Eventually, Hadley did get the credit he deserved. Thanks to a campaign by a group of University of Washington alumni, that span was renamed the Homer M. Hadley Memorial Bridge in 1993.