Eastside Heritage Center

August 2, 2019

Volunteer Diaries

Origins of Places’ Names in Bellevue and Its Surroundings

Eastside Heritage Center

August 2, 2019

Volunteer Diaries

When people choose a new city to live, they usually don’t care about the name of their new city. What matters are, for example, location, transportation, or the cost of living in that city, but normally how the name of city sounds doesn’t matter.

I am one of the unusual persons who decided to move to Bellevue partly because of its name – I felt the tone of its name “Bellevue” comfortable and beautiful. Though I confess that it wasn’t the main reason that I chose Bellevue as my first city in the United States (yes, there were lots of other reasons – of course more practical ones), the name of Bellevue was definitely a part of reasons for me.

But why is Bellevue called Bellevue? It’s a bit strange to give such a French-influenced name only to Bellevue (as you may already know, Bellevue means “Beautiful view” in French), seeing that there seems to be no such influence on names of other places in Bellevue or surrounding areas. This question leads me to refer to some origins of places’ names in Bellevue and surrounding areas in this article.

In Bellevue and its environs, I think one of the most visible categories about places’ names are the ones named after persons’ names. For example, there are Larson Lake (named after Ove Peter Larson, coal miner, homesteaded in 1889), McCormick Park (named after Robert McCormick, who was active in many civic projects during the fifties and the sixties), Meydenbauer Bay (named after William Meydenbauer, one of the first pioneers in Bellevue in 1869) and Mercer Slough (named after Aaron Mercer, settled in August 1869) in Bellevue or near Bellevue. In those cases, the names were chosen either among the persons who engaged socially in the area (This is true of McCormick’s case), or among early pioneers coming to the area.

There is a case in which a wish about future image of place can form its new name. Factoria, a business district in south Bellevue, was named in anticipation of its future industry. Fortunately, now Factoria is one of the liveliest commercial districts in the city, although it is not certain if this is thanks to its name.

Let’s get back to the name of Bellevue itself. I found two possible explanations why it was named Bellevue, and from both points of view, this name is something to do with the first post office in Bellevue, established in the 1880s. The first one tells that, during a conversation among postmen working there, one postman suggested to give to this area a name related to its good view, and in agreeing with him, another proposed to spell it in French way. According to this first explanation, this conversation is the origin of the name of Bellevue. The second one tells that Lucien and Matt Sharpe, brothers who worked as first postmen in Bellevue, chose the name Bellevue for this area. Actually, their hometown was the city already named Bellevue in Indiana, and that is why they chose this name for their new place of residence. Apparently, we don’t know which one is true (or if there is another true story) because of lack of documentations, but here are two interesting explanations.

We tend to take places’ names for granted and not rethink about their names, but exploring origins of their names is exploring their histories. If you have some time this summer, it would be interesting to take a glance at some anecdotes behind the name of the place where you live.

By: Misako - EHC Volunteer

References:

- Historic place names of Bellevue (Bellevue Historical society, in 1989, as a part of Centennial project)

- “Have you ever wondered where our eastside names came from? Here’s some interesting trivia” Windermere Real Estate

- Another version of how city came to be known by the name Bellevue, Lucile McDonald, 1980

- City of Bellevue, About us, https://bellevuewa.gov/discover-bellevue/about-us, consulted on July 9th 2019

Eastside Heritage Center

July 19, 2019

Eastside Stories

Eastside Stories: Eastside Cities

Eastside Heritage Center

July 19, 2019

Eastside Stories

Cities. Almost all of us on the Eastside today live in one. We may take our cities for granted, but they have not always existed—people had to create them. States are the foundation of the country, and counties are necessary subdivisions of states. Cities are, well, kind of optional.

When Finn Hill joined Kirkland in 2011, one of the last large bits of urban unincorporated area on the Eastside came under the benevolent arm of city hall. Most Eastsiders now live in one of 14 cities in the urbanized areas and five in the rural areas. The boundaries of cities often seem to make little sense, and they sit on top of a patchwork of school and other special districts.

If we were designing a system of governance from scratch we certainly would not end up with anything like the current map of the Eastside. So, how did we end up with our current array of cities?

Cities are formed when a group of residents petition their county government. Once a boundary for a proposed city is agreed upon, residents within that boundary vote on incorporation. Residents can also vote to annex to an existing city, if that city is willing to absorb them.

In the early days of the Eastside, pioneers had few expectations for government services, so cities were slow to form. It can be perfectly fine to live in unincorporated areas without city government. County government provides basic services, and other services are provided by special utility and fire districts and private associations.

Scene on Front Street in Issaquah circa 1910

The first wave of incorporations happened in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Issaquah is the oldest city on the Eastside, dating back to 1892 (originally named Gilman). It was a coal mining town that made a successful transition to railroad work. Snoqualmie (1903), Bothell (1909) and North Bend (1909) all had their roots in the early railroad routes and as logging and agricultural commercial centers.

Kirkland, which incorporated in 1905, was slated to become the “Pittsburgh of the West.” By the time Peter Kirk’s big industrial plans fell through, Kirkland had become a good sized settlement, and it made sense to form a city. Redmond, had its roots as a timber and railroad center, and incorporated its growing downtown in 1912. The farming and railroad towns of Carnation and Duvall incorporated in 1912 and 1913, respectively.

In 1910, when the postcard was mailed, Redmond was big enough not only to have its own souvenir cards, but also a local post office to mail them from.

Then city formation on the Eastside ground to a halt for decades. Growth was slow, as mining and timber activity wound down and few new large industries moved to the still-remote area. Some larger settlements, like those around the mines of Newcastle, disbanded. Bellevue was still just a one-street village, and the vast commercial areas of Overlake were farms and forests. Not much need for new cities.

Then in the 1950s, the Eastside sprang to life.

The new bridge across Mercer Island opened the area to large scale homebuilding, and Bellevue began to resemble a real city. In 1953 Bellevue incorporated with just under 6,000 residents. Feeling Bellevue breathing down their necks, the Points Communities formed themselves into four separate cities: Clyde Hill (1953), Hunts Point (1955), Medina (1955), Yarrow Point (1959). And the tiny artists colony of Beaux Arts Village formed itself into a town in 1954.

Eugene Boyd and Phil Reilly celebrate the incorporation of Bellevue in 1953

Then another 35 years of quiet. Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Issaquah and Bothell gradually annexed surrounding neighborhoods, but many pockets of residential area were perfectly happy with the benign neglect that county government offered.

But along came a less benign force: the Growth Management Act of 1989, which required extensive planning and encouraged higher density development. Nothing gets the attention of otherwise complacent citizens like the prospect of changes in land use, and within a few years, the Eastside had four more cities seeking to control their destiny: Woodinville (1993), Newcastle (1994), Kenmore (1998), Sammamish (1999).

In many respects, cities are the ultimate democratic institutions: groups of free citizens banding together to form a local government that will collect taxes from them and provide services they ask for. The chaotic looking map of the Eastside is the result of tens of thousands of individual decisions by Eastsiders about how they want to shape their neighborhoods. Individual cities take on the character of their residents over time and become unique places.

From chaos comes community.

All images from the collection of the Eastside Heritage Center. If you are interested in obtaining images from our collection, which has extensive holdings from Eastside cities, contact us at collections@eastsideheritagecenter.org

Learn more about the Eastside. Books available from Eastside Heritage Center include:

Lake Washington: The Eastside

Bellevue: the Post World War II Years

Our Town, Redmond

Medina

Hunts Point

Bellevue: Its First 100 Years

Our Mission To steward Eastside history by actively collecting, preserving, and interpreting documents and artifacts, and by promoting public involvement in and appreciation of this heritage through educational programming and community outreach.

Our Vision To be the leading organization that enhances community identity through the preservation and stewardship of the Eastside’s history.

Eastside Heritage Center

June 21, 2019

Eastside Stories

Eastside Stories: The Fleet that Never Was

Eastside Heritage Center

June 21, 2019

Eastside Stories

No. 10 | June 12, 2019

Eastside Stories

The Fleet that Never Was

By Margaret Laliberte

EHC Volunteer

The head of Yarrow Bay is a dreamy backwater on a sunny summer afternoon these days, but for a few months in the summer of 1945 the bay was the subject of a lively, often acrimonious, debate. Community and civic groups from around Lake Washington squared off against each other over a proposal by the US Navy to place more than three hundred ships for safekeeping between the marshy head of the bay and what is now Carillon Point.

This largely-forgotten slice of Eastside history happened as the war in the Pacific was coming to an end. In fact, on the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima the steering committee of the Kirkland Commercial Club met to consider the proposal. (They supported it.)

The Navy needed a place to mothball part of its National Defense Reserve Fleet, smaller ships that could be readied quickly for sea duty. Navy planners identified Yarrow Bay, drew up blueprints for two north-south docks and received a $4,000,000 appropriation for construction. The shoreline would be filled in and the whole bay dredged. This, according to the Navy, would beautify the harbor.

The Seattle Chamber of Commerce, Kirkland officials and a few civic groups and local unions saw the chance to keep jobs as the Lake Washington Shipyard in Houghton slowed down with the end of the war. A local union official argued “It may be hard on the scenery, but you can’t eat scenery. The presence of those ships means jobs. Jobs mean that our kids will be fed.” (At first the figure going around was 2500 jobs, but later it was revealed that there might be only about 100 civilian jobs.; the rest would be Navy personnel.)

Yarrow Bay in 1936. Lake Washington Shipyard (now Carillon Point) near the top, and wetlands that would have been dredged at the bottom

Supporters faced the vehement opposition of community groups around Lake Washington who feared the “industrialization” of the lake, water pollution, loss of views, and falling home values, to say nothing of all those sailors in town. Fred Delkin of the Hunts Point Community Club put it plainly: “Hunts Point doesn’t want the honky-tonks and other things that will go with [the ships] if a big maintenance crew is kept here.” The Yarrow Point Community Club sent flyers urging residents to protest to their senators, the Governor and Pentagon leadership.

Residents of Houghton, which was unincorporated at the time, felt that Kirkland and the Seattle Chamber of Commerce were selling them out. “They dropped this thing on us like a bombshell,” said Houghton resident Marcus Johnson. “I’d never think of buying a thing in Kirkland now,” said Mrs. Fred Gash. “We’d rather go all the way to Bellevue, and that’s what we’re doing.” The community had a much-loved beach park on the bay: 600 feet of waterfront where hundreds gathered on weekends to swim and picnic. It must have felt impossible to imagine the entire bay filled with military ships.

The Navy flew out two captains, one from the Navy Office of Public Information, to assess local sentiment at three meetings. The first, on Mercer Island, drew 400-500 people from 34 different community organizations bordering Lake Washington. Capt. Campbell’s patient assurances that bilge water and sewage would be safely piped ashore and not dumped into the lake did nothing to alter the vehement opposition of all the community groups. The captain asserted that the federal government had full authority over Lake Washington as a navigable body of water and could establish a moorage wherever it chose, although it would prefer to consult residents’ opinion. (He had the grace to admit that 98% of mail received back in Washington D.C. on the matter was in opposition to the plan.)

View from the northeast side of Yarrow Point, across Yarrow Bay to the Lake Washington Shipyard in 1939. The proposed Navy piers would have filled in this space.

At the third meeting, held at the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and lasting three hours, sentiment was declared about evenly divided, though the meeting ended in some confusion as to whether the proper rules of procedure had been followed. The Navy captains were clearly weary. “This has been no vacation,” Capt. Campbell admitted. “I’ve heard some of the hottest air I’ve ever heard during my time here.”

Local meetings and debate continued through the summer, but at the end of the day, the Navy ran up its flag and withdrew. According to reminiscences of V.J. Berton, Houghton’s first elected mayor, the proposal was finally dropped because the Navy had concluded that acid in the lake’s water would rust the ships’ metal. The fleet was instead sent to the Columbia River; the Navy moored the ships at long concrete piers just east of Astoria at Tongue Point Naval Air Station until 1963.

View to the southeast from Yarrow Point in 1939. The Houghton side of the bay was sparsely settled until the 1950s.

Back on the lake, one of the most lasting consequences of the summer imbroglio was the feeling in Houghton that association with Kirkland was no longer in their best interests. In 1947 the community voted to incorporate, and Houghton remained a separate jurisdiction until 1968, when it consolidated with Kirkland. And Fred Delkin’s fears of honky-tonks was well-founded: zoning at the time was weak to non-existent. There would have been little to stop development of commercial establishments catering to the Navy operations.

The strong opposition to the Navy’s project might have surprised the early promoters of the Lake Washington Ship Canal who envisioned significant industrial development on the lake. But as residents of the growing region increasingly appreciated the exquisite beauty of the lake and its shoreline, industrial uses stopped making much sense.

Thanks to Margaret Laliberte, Eastside Heritage Center volunteer, for researching and writing this story. Margaret is a resident of north Clyde Hill , just south of Yarrow Bay. If you would like to contribute an article to Eastside Stories, contact us at info@eastsideheritagecenter.org

Learn more about the Eastside. Books available from Eastside Heritage Center include:

Lake Washington: The Eastside

Bellevue: the Post World War II Years

Our Town, Redmond

Medina

Hunts Point

Bellevue: Its First 100 Years

Our Vision To be the leading organization that enhances community identity through the preservation and stewardship of the Eastside’s history.

Eastside Heritage Center

May 31, 2019

Eastside Stories

Eastside Stories: The Homestead as an ATM

Eastside Heritage Center

May 31, 2019

Eastside Stories

No. 9 | May 29, 2019

Eastside Stories

The Homestead as an ATM

The pioneers who built the Eastside were all diligent, sober-minded souls dedicated only to creating wonderful communities for their families and for future generations. Right? Well, most were, but for this edition of Eastside Stories we have a tale of an enterprising pioneer of a different sort.

Robert Gerrish, a board member and volunteer at the Bothell Historical Museum, has traced the machinations of a slick operator who also happens to be his grandmother’s first husband. The story—it gets a bit convoluted, but stay with it—goes like this:

Henry Rosenburg was baptized Wilhelm Henrich Rosenburg in 1852. In various documents he lists his birthplace as Stuttgart, Alsace-Lorraine and Paris. He arrived in the United States in 1876, and by 1883 he was in Deadwood, South Dakota (of course!). There he met Christina Reagan, (Robert’s grandmother) and in April of 1883 they were married in St. Patrick’s church in nearby Lead, South Dakota. In 1884, Christina and Henry, along with Thomas Reagan, Christina’s father, migrated to Seattle.

In 1885 Henry and Christina bought a house in Seattle and had their first child, Agnes. In 1886, Henry applied for Naturalization. That year he also claimed a homestead outside Bothell. Henry and Christina soon sold their Seattle house to Christina’s brother and moved in with Christina’s parents before settling into the Bothell homestead in 1888. They had had two more children, Martin and John, and all seemed well by 1889.

Henry and Christina Rosenburg in Deadwood, SD, prior to their move to Seattle in 1884. (Photo courtesy of Robert Gerrish)

Within a few years, Henry needed capital, and in January of 1892 he took out a $500 mortgage on his homestead (about $15,000 today). Only problem was that he still did not have full title to the homestead, which he would not get until April of that year.

Five quiet years passed until January 4 th of 1897, which was a busy day for Henry. He paid off the 1892 mortgage and immediately took out a new mortgage for $142. He used $100 of the proceeds to purchase Christina’s share of the property. Christina is now listed on the deed as “Christina Rosenburg of Seattle, Washington, former wife of William Henry Rosenburg.” After the purchase was complete, Henry, now described as a “single man,” took out a second mortgage for $65. He paid off this latest mortgage in 1898, but took out yet another mortgage of $275 in 1901.

Then he disappears until 1904. Family legend was that he had run off to the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897 and never returned. But that legend appears to have been a spin to cover up the scandal of divorce in a Catholic family. Henry did venture to the Yukon, but not in 1897. He turns up in Whitehorse in 1903, where, true to form, he filed for a mining patent for 160 acres.

By 1904 Henry was back wheeling and dealing in Bothell. He took out a mortgage from the wonderfully named J.W. Nipple for $1,000 and paid off his 1901 mortgage. He paid off Mr. Nipple in 1905 and sold “All of the timber of whatsoever kind or nature standing or fallen” on his property to Woodinville Lumber Company for $2,700.

The Rosenburg family circa 1896. From left, Martin (b. 1886), Henry, Agnes (b.1885, d. 1899), John (b. 1889), Christina. (Photo courtesy of Robert Gerrish)

Henry would not let his Bothell homestead be debt free for long, and on February 10 th 1908, he took out a $500 mortgage on it and, ten days later, started selling it off in chunks to a buyer who paid for it one piece at a time. A month later he paid off the most recent mortgage and assigned his remaining interests to a Seattle attorney. The saga of the Bothell homestead that he had treated as an ATM, was over.

By 1908 it appears that Henry had decamped again, this time for Soap Lake, in Central Washington, where he was still listed as a bachelor. In 1915 he married again, and passed away in 1927.

In addition to the multiple mysteries of this story (why lie about his birthplace? Why a divorce when such practice was strictly prohibited for Catholics? Where did he get the money to pay all those mortgages, and, for that matter, what did he do with the money he borrowed?) is the curious way in which Henry was able to find people to lend him money on a property of dubious value (it was quite remote for that time) for perhaps unknown purposes.

During the run-up in property values and debt of the early 2000s, Americans were roundly chastised for borrowing excessively against their homes. But the Henry Rosenburg story shows that this was not a new practice. In fact, 19 th century literature is full of references to properties that were overly mortgaged.

Yes, the Eastside was built by Sturdy Yeomen tight with a dollar, but also by more than a few Henry Rosenburgs.

Thanks to Robert Gerrish, of the Bothell Historical Museum, for this story and the accompanying photos. If you have a compelling Eastside Story, contact us at info@eastsideheritagecenter.org

Learn more about the Eastside. Books available from Eastside Heritage Center include:

Lake Washington: The Eastside

Bellevue: the Post World War II Years

Our Town, Redmond

Medina

Hunts Point

Bellevue: Its First 100 Years

Our Vision To be the leading organization that enhances community identity through the preservation and stewardship of the Eastside’s history.

Eastside Heritage Center

May 16, 2019

Eastside Stories

Eastside Stories: Ferry Landings of Lake Washington--Part II

Eastside Heritage Center

May 16, 2019

Eastside Stories

No. 8 | May 15, 2019

Eastside Stories

Ferry Landings of Lake Washington--Part II

In the first part of our tour of ferry landings on the east side of Lake Washington we covered the north part of the lake, from Juanita to Hunts Point. Now we will pick up the story continuing around the Points.

For the most part, the public ferry docks and wharves were built and maintained by King County. Except for Kirkland, which became a city in 1905, the eastern shore of the lake was all unincorporated and county government was the default provider of local government services and infrastructure.

When a group of settlers decided they needed a road or ferry dock they would petition the County Commission and make their case for the investment. If the county agreed to build the facility, property owners would be required to donate the necessary land. Roads were usually unpaved at first, and residents would have to undertake the entire process again to get a road widened and paved.

Periodically the county would send out an intrepid engineer to inspect the ferry docks. The logbooks for these inspections are in the King County Archives and provide insight into the challenges of maintaining these critical links. At a time when treated lumber was a rarity, there were perennial problems with rot and dangerous conditions.

And as ferry service declined and then ended, the county was left with a collection of mostly decrepit piers that had been gradually adapted to public uses.

Fairweather Wharf. We'll begin just south of where we left off in Fairweather Bay, between Hunts and Evergreen points, with the strange case of the Fairweather Wharf. Where today there is an engineered yacht basin between the two points, there was originally a wetland. In 1918, after Lake Washington was lowered and the wetland more fully exposed, King County decided that a wharf was needed at this location. This required construction of an elaborate structure--the Boddy-Hindle Trestle--across the wetland, with a spur to the wharf.

While the Boddy-Hindle Trestle became an important route through the Points, linking Evergreen Point to the base of Hunts Point, where there was a school and market, the wharf was never much used. No one lived in the immediate area and more convenient wharves were available on the points.

The image shows Fairweather Wharf when it was relatively new, with the section to the left leading to the Boddy-Hindle Trestle. A wharf inspector's report from 1930 indicates that the wharf is badly rotted and that everything above the water needed replacing. An inspector's report from 1946 indicates that the wharf had completely disappeared and no sign of it remained. The inspector was not bothered, though, noting that the wharf "was in a location not suitable for any reasonable construction supported by piling or otherwise."

Evergreen Point-Lake Lane . This pier served Evergreen Point and was a regular stop for the steamer Ariel. Its origin seems somewhat uncertain, as the Wharf Inspector of 1946 cannot find records of it having been built by King County. By 1946 ferry service had ended and the inspector noted that the pier was used for public access to the lake for swimming and boating--activities of which he approved! This location remains a public dock maintained by the City of Medina. (Photo courtesy of Washington State Archives)

Original Medina dock . Medina enjoyed regular ferry service from Seattle as early as the 1890s, with this robust pier at the foot of what is today N.E. 8th Street, near the "Green Store" and post office. The lakefront land for the wharf was donated to the county by Thomas Dabney, one of the first residents of the area. When a new car ferry landing was built to the south, the new owner of the Dabney property, Captain Elias Johnston, went to great lengths to reclaim the land from the county.

First Medina car ferry landing . The Port of Seattle introduced car ferry service to Medina and Bellevue in 1913, and this was the original wharf at the foot of Evergreen Point Road. This pier was left high and dry just a few years later when Lake Washington was lowered by nine feet with the opening of the new Ship Canal. The identity of the child on the beach is not known.

Medina Ferry Terminal . Following the lowering of Lake Washington and the exposure of new shoreline, King County built a new car ferry dock and terminal building. The original dock was built immediately adjacent to the terminal building and later moved to the south as shown in this image. When ferry service ended, the terminal building became a community clubhouse and, later, Medina City Hall. A much-remodeled city hall and beach park remain on the site today.

Clyde landing, Meydenbauer Bay, Bellevue. This pier stood at the foot of Clyde Road (now 92nd Avenue NE), which was named by an early resident with Scottish roots. It is not clear how much ferry service was provided to this location, as it is close to the main Bellevue dock. But the property did remain in public ownership and was converted into Clyde Beach Park, which is maintained by the City of Bellevue.

Learn more about the Eastside. Books available from Eastside Heritage Center include:

Lake Washington: The Eastside

Bellevue: the Post World War II Years

Our Town, Redmond

Medina

Hunts Point

Bellevue: Its First 100 Years

Our Vision To be the leading organization that enhances community identity through the preservation and stewardship of the Eastside’s history.