George and Bobbie Farmer: Mid-Century Visionaries

BY MARGARET LALIBERTE, EASTSIDE HERITAGE CENTER VOLUNTEER

Perhaps it was the Army surplus weapons carrier that made it possible; it certainly helped.  The weapons carrier (somewhat like a huge jeep) was the one and only means—aside from bushwhacking on foot---that George and Roberta (Bobbie) Farmer had of getting up to their acreage on the hillside lying just south of  present-day Eastgate. They bought their first parcel of 540 acres in 1945, knowing that the Eastside was ripe for development after the opening of the floating bridge across the lake in 1940.  At the time the few homes in the area were up on Cougar Mountain, accessible by the only road over the mountain from Newport Way, now 164th Ave. S.E. A rough track connected Highway 10 (today’s I-90) to Newport Way at what is now 150th Ave. S.E. A rifle range existed near Newport Way.

Although the land at the top of the hill had stands of tall firs, the hillside to the north had been logged off and was mainly scrub growth. George and Bobbie bought the weapons carrier at an Army surplus sale and used it to carry friends up the hill to enjoy picnics and stellar views to the South, West, and North. They set up a picnic table and occasionally camped overnight on the hill.  As Bobbie reminisced in an interview in 1999, “You had this winch on [the carrier] with a cable, that if you couldn’t make it up the hill you found a tree and you put the winch onto it and started and the winch pulls you up.”  The first prospective property purchasers were members of the group that organized Hilltop Community.  George would ferry them up the hill on Sundays for them to visualize how the hill top could be developed.  The Farmers sold the group 63 acres in 1948.

Aerial photo of Hilltop with Horizon View at bottom (1995.12 File #62)

Bulldozing a road up to the top of the hill came next.  The Farmers purchased land that is now Eastgate School and got easements from adjacent landowner Charlie Latta and Ed Brim.  Charlie and George installed a large sewer pipe in Squibb Creek in the ravine just above today’s school, filled over it with dirt from the creek bank, and built Farmer Road (today’s 150 th/151st/152nd  Ave S.E.). The first culvert washed out in a winter storm in 1948, and the weapons carrier swung into action again.

The Farmers had their own subdivision, Horizon View Division A, platted to the north of Hilltop Community.  But just weeks after the plat was complete, George died suddenly of a heart attack; he was just 41 years old.  Bobbie carried on by herself, getting the roads bulldozed and water lines installed.  (She had the rights to 10 water hook ups from the well Hilltop Community had dug.  Later she installed her own well.) On weekends she sat in her car with little folders of the plat hoping that folks out for a Sunday drive would be curious about where the roads led.  “I had a portable sign that said ‘Horizon View Lots for Sale’ and I used to put that on US 10….I put it up on Friday night, after the county road crew would be finished, and I would leave it up Saturday and Sunday.  On Sunday nights I took it down because … I didn’t want them knocking the sign down and taking it.” She also had to keep an eye out for folk who thought the cleared land was a rifle range.  “I would go out there and I screamed at them that they shouldn’t be shooting there on a Sunday.  They weren’t very responsive to me.  So I called the Sheriff’s Department, and they came out and arrested them.  Then I got to be a Deputy Sheriff.  I have my silver badge.  They still didn’t pay any attention to me, but the message got around that it wasn’t to be a shooting range there.”

Two women standing with sign reading "Horizon View" (2014.052.026)

Bobbie had her own home built in Division A and lived there between 1953 and 1959.  Then she moved further up the hill where she had platted Horizon View Division C. The weapons carrier languished beside the garage until it was vandalized and  a neighbor complained.  She finally sold it.  Over the years she sold off larger parcels to developers who created Eaglesmere and other neighborhoods on the hillside.  She also donated property to both the Bellevue School District and Seattle’s Catholic Archdiocese.  She was a generous donor to Eastside Catholic High School and upon her death in 2002 left it a bequest of $2 million.

After George’s death Bobbie had created a memorial plaque memory at the point of the triangle where S.E. 51st. St. and 145th Ave. S.E. meet.  She installed a flagpole and flew the flag she had been given when George, a World War II veteran, had died.  That little memorial area no longer exists.  But the stellar views to North and West still do.

Sources:

Oral interview of Roberta Farmer by Bellevue Historical Society, 1999

EHC archives

Findagrave.com/memorial/32981678/Roberta-farmer. Accessed Feb. 14, 2023

Sarah Jean Green, “Eastside Catholic ‘guardian angel’ leaves $2 million surprise in will,” Seattle Times, May 16, 2002

Alice Staples, “Woman Sells East Side Mountain for $1,000,000,” Seattle Sunday Times, Aug. 13, 1961, p.1

Laurie Varosh, “Houses old and new have in common panoramic view,” Journal American, Sept. 16, 1985, p.2

Fred Eitel and Lochleven’s Earliest Days

BY Margaret Laliberte, EASTSIDE HERITAGE CENTER VOLUNTEER

Swimmers at Rogers Beach in Meydenbauer Bay in the 1920s.  It is likely that some of them may be members of the Eitel family. (2001.114.026)

A note on the back of a photo from the 1920s showing swimmers relaxing in Meydenbauer Bay identifies their location as "Rogers Beach, 96th, west of Eitel Beach.”  Where could that be?  The Polk Eastside Atlas of 1945 identified parcels owned by Fred J. Eitel and another by Sarah Rogers, lying between the bay and Lake Washington Boulevard, south of 96th Ave. N.E. and west of what later became the first Meydenbauer Beach Park in 1953. That was the heart of the Lochleven neighborhood, which owed its existence to Fred Eitel and his co-officers of the Bellevue Land Company, William Norris and F. A. Sutphen. By 1906 Eitel had purchased several parcels and conveyed them to the newly incorporated company. A plat map was filed with the county in 1907.

Plat of Lochleven. The subdivision‘s boundaries are Meydenbauer Bay and streets now known as  92nd Ave. N.E., N.E. 8th St. and 100th Ave. N.E. (Dawes 2003.003)

At that time Eitel was already an up-and-coming property developer in Seattle.  In 1904, when the massive Second Denny regrade project was underway on Second Avenue, he and his brother David had begun building the six-story Eitel Building on the corner of Second Avenue and Pike Street. Completed in 1906, it housed the largest passenger elevator in the Northwest at the time. A photo shows the building under construction while Second Avenue just to the North was only a track winding among piles of dirt and debris.   The building was one of numerous substantial new buildings in the developing area the Seattle Daily Times called a “handsome retail district.” In coming years Fred Eitel owned significant buildings in the city’s core and in the newly reclaimed “tide lands.” In an ad for a real estate investment firm in which he was a shareholder, Eitel was described as “a real estate expert and man of affairs.”

Over in Meydenbauer Bay the Lochleven development got underway in 1906, advertised frequently in both the Seattle Daily Times and Post-Intelligencer newspapers. Initially the developers had a grand vision. A Times article described “a broad esplanade for the waterfront with a heavy retaining bulkhead, concrete walks, parks, parking strips, piers, boat houses, graded streets and a water system.” This would be a district of attractive homes from which apartments and businesses would be barred and a single distinctive “English” style of architecture would prevail throughout. Another ad assured readers that the developers were catering to “discriminating buyers who wish not to be surrounded by shacks.” An illustration showed a large dock with a Craftsman-style pavilion. Over the summer free excursions by steamer were offered. Potential buyers were cautioned not to expect to see the old English houses or Kenwood Boulevard along the waterfront—yet. (A few months later promised improvements were apparently scaled back, as ads mentioned only graded streets, cement sidewalks and water mains.)

Lochleven’s marketing efforts alternated between promoting an attractive residential development and suggesting downright land speculation. The ship canal and locks were on the horizon—construction began in 1911—and even in 1906 newspaper ads suggested that the lowering of the lake would probably add 50 to 100 of land to Lochleven waterfront parcels.  As the so-called Eastern shore built up, property values would soar, readers were assured.

Perhaps the most unusual example of speculation was the sale of a parcel of Lochleven waterfront property in 1919 to the American Pacific Whaling Company. A wharf was built, and the company’s ships in the Alaska whaling industry overwintered there until 1942.  (The parcel later became part of today’s Meydenbauer Bay Park.) The company founder’s grandson reminisced that when the company moved to town, Bellevue “was way out in the sticks and there was no objection to a commercial enterprise in Meydenbauer Bay.”

Eitel family home in Lochleven in 1922, looking west towards Medina.  The steamer on Meydenbauer Bay is the “Atlanta,” just one of the small ferries servicing East shore communities. (Dawes 2003.003)

Lochleven developed slowly over the years.  In 1918 Eitel and his wife Ruby moved their family of four children to their new home there. They became active members of the growing Bellevue community. Ruby was active in the Bellevue Women’s Club in the 1920s, the girls in the Junior Division of the Fruit and Flower Mission (which ultimately became Bellevue LifeSpring). Fred served on the board of the school district and was a founding officer of the Bellevue Water Company. In 1938 he died of injuries from being hit by a car as he stepped from the bus on his way home. He was 71.  Ruby had died of illness nearly three years earlier.

Fred Eitel’s legacy is evident on both sides of the lake today.  The Eitel Building still stands, having survived years of deterioration, boarded-up windows, and a threat from the City to demolish it. Its latest owners completely restored it, to the tune of $16 million, and it is now the State Hotel, from whose rooftop deck guests look over the Pike Place Market to Elliott Bay.  Lochleven is still a quiet green neighborhood.  It lacks the beachfront promenade—and for the most part the promised paved sidewalks. It has an active community association, though.  Voting membership is based on residence within the boundaries of the original 1907 plat map.

Resources:

EHC archives (Dawes Collection)

Seattle Daily Times May 27, 1904, August 21, 1904, February 12, 1905, May 20, 1906, April 16, 1907, Sept. 10, 1909, November 9, 1938

Seattle Post-Intelligencer June 7 and 17, 1906, July 11, 13, and 29, 1906, April 5, 1936

Bellevue Reporter October 14, 2011 (Heritage Corner)

Wikipedia article “Eitel Building”

Univ. of Wash Special Collections, photograph by Arthur Churchilll Warner 1904 , PH Coll 273.168

Oral History interview with William Schupp Lagen, EHC files

Steve Johnston, “Whale Festival in Bellevue Honors Oldtime Industry,” Seattle Times, March 1, 1991