1890 - 1913

[Early History]-[1774-1860]-[Civil War - 1889]-[1890-1913]
[WWI-1938]-[WWII-1974]-[1975-1990]-[1991-2005]-[2006-2030]

[1890-1913] Farms, Lumber, Schools, and more!

 1890

A sawmill, shingle mills, and farms dotted the "downtown" Bellevue area. 

The growing community now had a school and about 20 families settled in the Clyde Hill, Medina and recently-named downtown Bellevue area.

1890 Bellevue City plot for area the be called The Moorlands. placed over modern map.

|

1891

|

Vitus Schmid patent 1891 (above)

|

1892

2-room Main Street School with a bell tower is built on the S. E. corner of 100th and Main Street.

Built with Bellevue’s first bond issue after Washington became a state. It cost $1500.00 and Bechtel, Burrows, Meyers, Sturtevant and Downey helped build it. 

Adelaide Frances Mickels was teacher.

This school was built with Bellevue’s first bond issue shortly after Washington had been established as a state.

Old Main Street Schoolhouse in Bellevue. Ca. 1905.
Credit: University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections

|

1892 Captain John L. Anderson operates a fleet of steamers on Lake Washington and begins the first scheduled ferry service to Bellevue (1906 picture above).

1892 Two room Bellevue Main Street School with bell tower is erected on the southeast corner of 100th NE and Main Street.

Map of railroad, government, and school lands in King County, including Northern Pacific RR land sold into private ownership, 1892 (above).

|

William Shiach patented (above) his claim in August of 1892, the entire southwest quarter of Section 24, T25N, R5E which is now part of the Ardmore section of Bellevue. Shiach was later was one of the surveyors for the King County timber cruises in 1907.

|

William Hicks 1892 patent

|

1893

Mercer Slough/Phantom Lake School opened in an abandoned bachelor’s cabin.
(Around 1911 it was enlarged; closed in 1917 when a new school was built)

|
||
|||

Six months after the railroad reached Seattle came the Panic of 1893, triggering Washington State’s first severe four-year nationwide depression that forced Leigh S. J. Hunt to sell everything at a loss in 1894 -- including his land on Yarrow Point not deeded in 1888 to his friend, Jacob Furth. In Washington, dozens of banks failed, though crucial ones survived, including, Puget Sound Savings (which became Puget Sound National).

|||

||
|

1894 

William Powell (c. 1835-1924) built a small dam at the upper end of the slough, about two miles from Lake Washington, at what would be about the south end  of the Sturtevant property. Also on Powell's property was a small sawmill. Powell used the pond created by his dam to store logs, which he then floated out through the slough and down to Lake Washington.

|

A one-room Phantom Lake Schoolhouse was built in 1894. This first school building was a log cabin where the students had to do their written work on rough wood planks nailed to the wall.
The students had to carry their chairs to school with them and the school term was only four months a year.
|

||

1895

Arthur Alfonsus Nordhoff was born July 29, 1895 to Edward and Josephine Nordhoff. His family founded the Bon Marche department store in Seattle, Washington. After World War I, Arthur returned home and later started the Bellevue Airfield. 

|

     1895  One of oldest pioneer homesteads in its original location, Robinswood House Estate Main House was built in by Hans Miller. The name appears to be Danish. Robinswood House offers "sweeping views" of  Bellevue's 60-acre Robinswood Park (~T24 R5E SEC 2, 11)

|

|

Charles R. Meyers 1895 Patent

|

1897

Gold prospectors and supplies outside of merchant Cooper & Levy, Seattle, ca. 1897

    The depression from the Panic of 1893 did not ease until onset of the Klondike Gold Rush in 1897. July 17, 1897, the steamship Portland arrived in Seattle from Alaska with 68 miners and a cargo of “more than a ton of solid gold” from the banks of the Klondike River in Canada's Yukon Territory. This set off a rush to Alaska and an era of prosperity in King County that lasted more than a decade

|
|

1898

Puget Sound Energy's predecessor Puget Sound Power and Light builds the region's first large hydroelectric plant at Snoqualmie Falls.

|

1900

January 3rd, 1900
James J. Hill (1838 – 1916) CEO of Great Northern Railway sold 900,000 acres (originally given to railroad in return for constructing transcontinental Northern Pacific Railway) to German-immigrant Frederick Weyerhaeuser for $6.00/acre

Frederick Weyerhauser (above) organized Weyerhaeuser Timber Company as president.

|

1900 census counted 400 persons in the Bellevue area :

100 persons living on Meydenbauer Bay; 200 persons living in Medina, Hunts Point, Yarrow Point (The Points) and Clyde Hill; 100 persons living in Killarney (approximately Southeast 25th Street of present-day Bellevue).

|

1901

Factoria School opened creating Factoria School District #134.

|

|

1903

 Weyerhaeuser owned more than 1.5 million acres of land in Washington including some sold off to become part of present-day Bellevue's Lake Hill's neighborhood.

|

|

1904

The initial Unincorporated City of Bellevue was originally platted and recorded by Oliver Franz and William Raine

|

1904 Wilburton timber railroad trestle is built across the Wilburton gap. Spirit of Washington Dinner train started service in 1992 (above).

|

1905

Early landowners within the limits of Clyde Hill included Jacob Furth, a "Mr. Mercer", and others.

1905 Lake Washington Belt Line (LWBL) of the Northern Pacific Railway runs through Bellevue/Wilburton

|
|

1907 

William Raine and John Reiner were listed as owners of the property that would later become the Bellevue Bus Transit Center

|

1907-1909
FIRST AUTOMOBILES ON THE EASTSIDE

|

1907 - A lone telephone line reaches Medina.

|

1908 

The Village of Beaux Arts is established as an artists’ colony by the Beaux Arts Society on Johnson’s Wharf; it becomes one of Bellevue’s first residential communities. "Beaux-Arts" architecture was the academic architectural style taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

|

1909
Hunts Point School, a one-room schoolhouse opens. Miss Maude Bechtel was the first teacher. (8 grades in one room) Miss Jepson, Mr. Einer Mr. Fretheim and Rudolph Elmer were principals. By 1917, another room had been added. Through the years, more additions and remodeling were done. Later the school was called Bay School and joined with Medina to be the Bay/Medina School. The school burned down in 1950

|

1910

Population of Bellevue increased to almost 1,500 people. 

First Medina School opened as its own little school district #17. The Medina Grocery store is built

1910 Samuel Curtiss Foster (1881-1960) and wife Harriett Elizabeth Woods (1880-1959) filed a "Declaration of Homestead" document and built a cabin on the west side of their 1-acre Yarrow Point property that fronted on 92nd Avenue NE and extended eastward to 94th Avenue NE.

|

1911

The Lake Washington Ship Canal project began in 1911 to accommodate the approximately 20-foot (6.1 m) difference in water level between Lake Washington and Puget Sound

|

1912

Beaux Arts School property was obtained from several different Individuals for the sum of $1,000.00. 

The Main Street School was established as a two-year secondary school in District #49;
The entire high school and eighth grade shared a single room in the Main Street School.
Frances Gordon and Norma Morgan were the first graduates.

|

1913
Modern Ferryboats replace Steamers: In December the ferry Leschi was launched and with it came a major change in the transportation system. People could take their motor vehicles with them to Seattle and to the Eastside.
|

In 1913, George F. Meacham deeded two acres for a park that became known as the George F. Meecham-Morningside Park and later the location of the Yarrow Point Town Hall, dedicated in 1990

|

1913 When Ove P. Larsen died, half the Larsen Lake property was sold to 4 Aries brothers, who turned the property into one of the largest vegetable farms in the area.  The Aries farm shipped produce as far away as Alaska, the Philippines and Yukon Territory.

Other Larsen land was purchased by J.J. Bryce (Brys).
|

|

|

1913

The Bellevue Community Clubhouse on 100th Avenue NE is built. The "thriving, prosperous suburb of Seattle situated on the east shore ... the population of the Bellevue district is about 1900 ... there are three good stores, three grammar schools, a fine high school, two churches, one blacksmith shop, one large sawmill, a post office ... plenty of pure air and an abundance of the purest water (but no saloons)."

Land Patents for Bellevue Area Land 1890+