Lincoln Park

This guide to Lincoln Park in Seattle traces the tidal swimming hole lifeguard Morey Skaret filled by hand-cranking a gate valve in 1925, letting Puget Sound flood a muddy, unfiltered lagoon that swimmers shared with shiners and candlefish. It follows sixteen years of that gravity-and-moon operation, run on nothing more than a chemical test every four days, up to the 1941 gift from the Colman family that funded a proper bathhouse. Stand at the pool deck and listen for what of that original setup the family chose to keep.