[Early History]-[1774-1860]-[Civil War - 1889]-[1890-1913]
[WWI-1938]-[WWII-1974]-[1975-1990]-[1991-2005]-[2006-2020]
[1890-1913] Farms, Lumber, Schools, and more!
In 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.
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Roads quickly followed; soon the community was big enough for a name.
Dabney wanted to name it "Flordeline," but this didn't sit well with his wife Flora.
Three women -- Flora Belote, Ruby Burke, and Eliza Geicker -- chose Belote's: "Medina," for a city on the Arabian Peninsula that is one of the holy cities of Islam. The name Medina stuck, though with a different pronunciation ("Me-dye-na") than the Arabian original ("Me-dee-na").
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In 1890 Danish couple Ove and Mary Larsen homesteaded in the area now known as Larsen Lake Farm (also known as Blueberry Lake), harvesting wild blue huckleberries and cranberries from the surrounding wetlands.
Ove worked at the Newcastle coal mines; Newcastle-Coal Creek was a coal mining town in south King County established ~1870's after coal was discovered along Coal Creek in 1863.
By 1876 the Newcastle mines produced 400 tons of coal a day and employed 250 men.
The last coal mine at Newcastle closed in 1963
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In 1890, farmer Henry Thode built his cabin by Phantom Lake. The area was used by Japanese immigrants and an original cabin was moved in 1989 to Larsen Lake Blueberry Farm.
Originally the Kelsey Creek drainage basin included what is now Phantom Lake.
Henry Thode redirected the Phantom Lake outlet to Lake Sammamish,
resulting in reduced water flow to Kelsey Creek and massive erosion.
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| 1890 Bellevue City plot for area the be called The Moorlands. placed over modern map. |
It was a one-room school for six students. It closed in 1919.
The building was used for a community hall and a storage warehouse for Bellevue School District.
In the late 40’s and early 50’s, the building was rented by the state highway department.
the Washington Farmer, in Anacortes, Washington.
where he grew pecans and ran a wholesale grocery business.
In 1896 Frederick Kemper Freeman married Mary Julia Roper.
the S. E. corner of 100th and Main Street.
It was 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 the teacher.
They owned it until The Little School purchased it in 1985.
Around 1911, it was enlarged. It closed in 1917 when a new school was built.
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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.
The students had to carry their chairs to school with them and the school term was only four months a year.
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a barn and a later larger cabin (now known as Robinswood House).
Miller built this grouping over a ten-year span from 1884.
Robinswood House offers "sweeping views" of Bellevue's 60-acre Robinswood Park;
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| 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. In 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
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In 1898, Puget Sound Energy's predecessor Puget Sound Power and Light
builds the region's first large hydroelectric plant at Snoqualmie Falls.
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| Isabella (Isabelle) Bechtel and her two daughters, Maude to her left and Jesse to her right, stand outside of the family home and the first post office in the soon-to-be-named Bellevue area. |
Isabella Bechtel retired as postmaster only on a disputed date sometimes between 1891-1895 probably due to the financial hardship she faced after her husband’s death. In spite of having to leave the cabin where the Bechtel home and the first post office was located, Isabella landed on her feet, moving her family to a 40 acre tract of land she bought outright. In 1899 she was forced to give up Isaac's logging business to pay taxes and probate attorneys.
Isabella Bechtel is part of the namesake for Bellevue although origins of the whole name are unclear.
Historical sources say "because the post office needed an official designation", when two postal inspectors visited, they titled the location based on the beautiful view.
If these Postal Inspectors were either the actual Sharpe brothers, Postmaster Matthew and Lucian, or associated with them, perhaps the city name was both tribute to Isabella (Isabelle) and inspired by the Sharpe hometown of Belleview, Indiana.
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1898 "Jusaburo Fuji" and "Mr. Setsuda" are said to be the first
Japanese pioneers who arrived in Bellevue.
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| Frederick Weyerhauser organized the Weyerhaeuser Timber Company as president. |
On January 3rd, 1900, James J. Hill (September 16, 1838 – May 29, 1916), chief executive officer of a family of lines headed by the Great Northern Railway sold 900,000 acres of land in Washington state (land originally given to the railroad by the federal government in return for constructing a transcontinental Northern Pacific Railway) to German-immigrant Frederick Weyerhaeuser for $6.00 an acre.
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| 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). |
and George England (1851-1930),
took over timber operations at the upper end of the Mercer slough.
to the north of the upper end of Mercer slough.
Wilburton, the name derived from Wilbur and England logging camp, became the boom town of the Eastside at the head of Mercer slough.
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| Edward Payson Tremper Sr. (1860-1944)came to Seattle in 1889 |
including some sold off to become part of present-day Bellevue's Lake Hill's neighborhood.
The initial Unincorporated City of Bellevue was originally platted
and recorded by Oliver Franz and William Raine in 1904.
Lake Washington Belt Line from Black River Junction (south of Seattle) to Woodinville.
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| The Wilburton Trestle was subsequently rebuilt four separate times, in 1913, 1924, 1934, and 1943, due to deterioration of the timber. |
Republican Miller Freeman fired off a letter to President Theodore Roosevelt reporting two Japanese schooners had been fishing off Alaska. Roosevelt sent a Coast Guard cutter to Funter Bay, where the schooners were operating, seizing them and imprisoning and later deporting their crews. “There was no diplomatic note-writing, and no war,” Freeman later wrote. According to Freeman, he then prevailed upon the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries to establish regulations forbidding “aliens ineligible for citizenship”—in other words, all Asians, but specifically the Japanese—from fishing in Alaskan waters. Freeman apparently believed the incident played a role in inspiring Roosevelt to pursue the 1907 “Gentlemen’s Agreement”—in which Japan agreed to cease permitting any further immigration from its shores—two years later.
As Miller later described it, “I got on the warpath of wholesale immigration of Japanese to the Pacific Coast in 1907, and joined up with others in making such a rumpus about it that Theodore Roosevelt finally took it upon himself to notify Japan that colonization of our Pacific Coast areas would have to be stopped.”
In 1905, early landowners within the present limits of Clyde Hill
included Jacob Furth, a "Mr. Mercer", and others.
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1906 Wilburton School Property was acquired on October 4th
by old school District #49 from Mary M. Gruber for $250.00.
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1907-1909 - FIRST AUTOMOBILES ON THE EASTSIDE
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In 1907 a Scotsman, George F. Meacham, filed the first development plat for Yarrow Point.
He advertised lots for sale and sponsored a contest to name the streets,
asking for Scottish names;
Sunnybrae, Bonneybrae, Mossgiel, Loch Lane, and Haddin Way
continue to appear alongside the numbers on Yarrow Point street signs.
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Shichiro and Shin Matsuzawa reunited in Seattle in 1908
while their first son once again remained in Japan.
Settling near where Shin already worked in Yarrow Point
their second son, Joe, was born in 1913.
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| Schichiro & Shin Matsuzawa / ~1908 |
Shichiro and Shin Matsuzawa were both Japanese citizens married in Japan.
Hailing from Niigata Prefecture their first son was born there and remained in Japan all his life even though his parents would travel through Seattle to settle on the Eastside. Shichiro first made his way to the United States and arrived alone in 1906 while Shin remained in Japan with their child until they could afford for her to follow her husband later. They would live separate for at least two years as the events of their lives kept them from being reunited. The Matsuzawa family are a part of the first (Issei) and second (Nisei) generation of Japanese-Americans who helped to clear the land on the Eastside and farmed there until World War II led to the mass incarceration of people of Japanese descent, including the Matsuzawas.
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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
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By 1910 the population of Bellevue increased to almost 1,500 people.
1910, the first Medina School opened as its own little school district #17.
Another building was built in 1925.
It had four classrooms. Sixteen classrooms were added in 1956.
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Miller Freeman says a 'Yellow Peril' is ahead and publishes article in The Seattle Times in 1910:
Source: http://ddr.densho.org/ddr-densho-56-175/
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| USS Monitor Cheyenne - 1910 Elliot Bay brought up West Coast by Miller Freeman Sr. |
Kinpachi Furukawa and Tokuo Numoto were two first-generation immigrants
who had purchased land in Bellevue before law prevented ownership.
When Cano Numoto was born about 1910, his father was 38 and his mother, Yoshia, was 32.
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In 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 one-acre Yarrow Point property
that fronted on 92nd Avenue NE and extended eastward to 94th Avenue NE.
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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
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In 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.
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| 1912 Miller Freeman Sr. (A) and Salmon Industry Canners |
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In 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.
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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
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In 1913 when Ove Larsen died, half the Larsen Lake property
was sold to the four 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).
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