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Bellevue: The Crown Jewel of the Eastside -
by Jeremy Nickolas Allen
Bellevue is the Eastside's premier city. While once
merely a rural getaway for Seattleites, Bellevue recently,
and rapidly, has become an essential metropolis opposite
Seattle on Lake Washington. The locale's longtime country
spirit is now infused with big city tastes: people buy
their minks in shopping malls built over grounds where
the minks were once actually hunted. It is Washington's
fourth largest city, home to a full quarter of the state's
high-tech jobs, and brandishes its own distinct skyline
proudly over Lake Washington.
As grand as Bellevue is now; its beginnings are humble.
The region's first two settlers, William Meydenbauer
and Aaron Mercer, are probably its most famous, having
Mercer Slough and Meydenbauer bay named after them respectfully.
However, neither man stayed much longer than it took
to get a land title or settler's patent. Mercer's furnishings
were so meager in 1869 that his family had to take turns
with the silverware, and by 1871 they had already moved
away to Duamish. So, while Mercer's name is long lasting
in Bellevue, he was not. Meydenbauer, a prominent German
immigrant and Seattle baker, has a similar story. He
had already sold half of his forty acres only years
after arriving. Much later, wanting an Eastside summer
home, he returned, but after finding land prices had
skyrocketed to seventy-five dollars per acre, he instead
bought land in Hunts Point. All the same, permanent
settlers did eventually come, and many of these unsung
pioneers were Civil War veterans who had been promised
land in return for their military service.
Life on the Eastside was hard on its inhabitants. Supplies
had to be rowed in across the lake, cougars roamed freely,
and residents couldn't wander far off the narrow trails
due to thick underbrush and dense knots of fir trees,
whose trunks stretched up to twelve feet in diameter
and three-hundred feet high. The painstaking labor required
in getting these trees out prevented even loggers from
operating more than a mile inland for a time to come.
However hard it was on them, families did eventually
carve out their niches here and were slowly followed
by others. In 1883 Bellevue got its first schoolhouse,
whose ten by twelve feet held only three seats, a blackboard,
and a desk for the teacher. Three years later a Post
Office was built, and it is perhaps linked to this construction
that Bellevue was then named. Exactly who named Bellevue
is debatable: it was either the man that built the first
schoolhouse, the man that provided the windows for that
schoolhouse, or the first postmaster. Legends vary,
but no matter who gave the name, it means 'beautiful
view' and is certainly an apt description of the area.
Bellevue remained a remote location through the turn
of the century. Most of its citizens worked in the surrounding
coalmines or at farming berries in the local meadows.
Only a handful of roads skirted the area, and in 1906
the first rail line came through. People were especially
grateful for the train service, as it liberated them
from having to boat in all of their supplies from across
Lake Washington. Still coming across the lake in plenty,
though, were some of Seattle's wealthier denizens, making
excursions to the botanical wonderland that was, and
still is, Wildwood Park. Many a lavish party had been
thrown on warm summer nights in the park, sometimes
stirring things up a little too much for the locals'
taste.
The 1920's brought good tidings for Bellevue. The decade
began with the construction of a highway linking Bellevue
to Newport, a bridge connecting Bellevue to Mercer Island,
and Lake Washington Boulevard. These routes were the
first serious links between Bellevue and its neighbors,
and the town began to earn its place on the map because
of them. By this time Bellevue had developed a substantial
strawberry yield and decided to celebrate the tasty
berry with an annual festival. The agricultural success
was in large part thanks to Bellevue's thriving Asian
community, who were responsible for up to ninety-five
percent of the strawberry crop at that time. The festival
itself went off splendidly, and by 1935 drew up to 15,000
people into the small town.
As the1920's drew to a close, Bellevue remained a prosperous
and quaint town. James Ditty, however, saw a future
that would change Bellevue's smallness-a future that
would come from across the water by road. He predicted
a bridge linking Seattle and Bellevue, and he developed
plans for an Eastside that would hold over 200,000 residents.
People laughed at him, but he erected Lakeside Supermarket
in an accordingly suitable location all the same. The
bridge didn't come until 1940, and when it did many
people thought it would sink. On opening day, though,
the bridge successfully transported some 12,000 people.
Bellevue Square Mall, started in 1945, now stands on
the same ground which James Ditty first built his supermarket.
For a time after the bridge was built, Bellevue was
billed to Seattleites as 'rural living fifteen minutes
from downtown.' As soon as the 1953 incorporation though,
city planners realized this locale would not remain
rural for long. The next decade would mark the development
of the hospitals, roads, bridges, and schools that would
convert Bellevue into a full-blown city. The final death-knell
for the area as a suburb came in 1981 when the downtown
was rezoned to accommodate skyscrapers. The city planners'
wisdom has proved useful over time: Bellevue has grown
from 6,000 to 117,000 residents since 1953 and still
retains the comfortable living that first drew families
here. Quiet low-crime residential areas rest minutes
away from downtown bustle, and parking is as plentiful
as ever-well into the 21st century, Bellevue is thriving!
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