Hans Miller and Albert Burrows Cabins

The Hans Miller and Albert Burrows cabins will be the final article on “Bellevue’s Early Cabins”.  They are located in Bellevue Parks, but not open to the public.  Hopefully, at some future time, Eastside Heritage Center will be able to do outdoor programs at these sites.

Burrows Cabin, Rody Burrows on porch. (OR/L 79.79.533)

The Burrows cabin is the oldest of the five featured structures.  In 1882, Albert Burrows filed a land claim on the east side of Lake Washington and built a 14 x24 cedar log cabin, chinked with clay and moss. Albert was a Civil War veteran from Iowa and this land was part of the Homestead Act. The area became known as Burrows Landing, just south of Chism Park.

In the 30s, the cabin was moved to Bellevue Way, near Bellevue Square, and later, in 1946, to a site on 112th Ave. NE.  It remained a private residence until 2016 when it was transported to Chism Park. It is thought to be located near its original site and can be seen on the upper lawn of the park.

Miller Cabin at Robinswood Park, 1976. (L88.064.006)

The Hans Miller Cabin is found at Robinswood Park, its original location.  The cabin was built in 1884 by a settler from Denmark, Hans Miller, and built quickly for immediate shelter.  He also built a log barn a few years later.  Both structures were built with axes and cedar trees.

In 1978, the city of Bellevue dismantled the cabin, and reassembled it on its original site.  Most of the logs for the four walls are the original ones that Miller chopped down in the 1880s.  The new shakes on the roof were hand-split like the originals.  A floor was installed and unbreakable glass to help with the vandalism.  Ed Kelly, Jerry Garrison, and Jim Fifer were responsible for the restoration work.  It is still hoped that the cabin can be used at some future date.

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Resources

Eastside Heritage Center Archives

Blueberries For Bellevue!

BY Barb williams, EASTSIDE HERITAGE CENTER VOLUNTEER

 

Blueberry Facts:

Blueberries: genus Vaccinium.

Swamp blueberries: Vaccinium corymbosum prefer year-round wet acidic peat mixed with sand. Upland varieties: V. pennsylvanicum prefer acidic sandy soils subject to seasonal drought. The necessary presence of a root-fungus supplies nitrogen.

A Journal American 1996 article stated: blueberries are the only indigenous North American fruit grown in large commercial quantities; Washington produces about 6.2 million pounds of blueberries annually and ranks fifth behind Michigan, Maine, New Jersey and North Carolina in production. The oldest living blueberry bush (10,000 years) is located at Losh Run, Pennsylvania. 

Children in blueberry field, Bellevue (2002.135.001)

Bellevue owns two major blueberry farms: The Overlake Blueberry Farm at the Mercer Slough; the Larsen Lake Blueberry Farm at Larsen Lake. Historically, indigenous peoples gathered wild blue huckleberries at Larsen Lake. Both Bellevue farms are organic (no pesticides or fertilizers), U-pick and sell produce. Roger Hoesterey, Bellevue City Parks Department and Resource Manager (1990s), helped preserve these lands as farmland ecology sites and for blueberry production. They total 36 acres (Larsen Lake/Blueberry Lake = 14,  Overlake/Mercer Slough = 22), have approximately 24,000 plants that yielded an estimated average per year of 35,270 pounds of “U-pick” blueberries, and 8,594 pounds of “over the counter” blueberries from 2006 to 2016. 

Blueberries are relatively easy to grow, harvest, transplant, store, pack, and ship making them a productive commercial crop.

Historic Perspective:

After extensive research, Louis Weinzril, a chemist and bacteriologist, bought a 45-acre farm in Bellevue (1944) on which to grow blueberries. He and his wife named the farm, Blueberry Lake Farm which was later renamed Larsen Lake to honor Ove Peter and Mary Larsen, the original owners. Louis planted nine varieties of blueberries and hired teenagers who were paid $600 to $1,000 a year. In 1957, they picked 50 tons of berries and shipped them to many states.  

W.D. Sydnor, a horticulturalist for the Southern Railway, introduced blueberries to Bellevue in 1933 when he planted four acres of berries on his land at 108th just east of  the current Barnes and Noble store. His plants came from all over including China, Maine and Florida. He could net a thousand dollars per acre, sold to the dinner trains and hired five to ten pickers. He believed upland blueberries, like his, were sweeter than swamp/bog blueberries. He grew nickel-sized berries and farmed from 1933 to 1944. 

Overlake Blueberry label, 1947

M. Lee Dennison and Ernie Van Tine believed the blueberry would be the opportunity crop for the next half century, Puget Sound would become the greatest global blueberry-growing area and the Mercer Slough one of the most productive. In 1947 Dennison moved his Des Moines plants to the Mercer Slough and the Overlake Blueberry Farm was born. In the 1980s the City of Bellevue purchased the lands.   

Different people have leased the Larsen Lake and Overlake blueberry farms from the City of Bellevue since the city purchased the lands in the 1940s and 1980s. Ted and Nancy Harding (1980-1994) and Bill Pace (2001-2016) worked the lands and managed the produce stands at the Overlake farm. A piano tuner, Tim Randall, leased the Larsen Lake farm (1984-1990). Dale Christensen of Christensen Farms worked the Larsen Lake and Overlake farms in 1999 with an expected yield of 140,000 pounds of berries. The Cha New Life Garden group of Cha Family Farms presently operates the fruit and produce stand at Larsen Lake. Currently, the City of Bellevue manages the crops for both farms.    

Blueberry Festival Princess, Bellevue American, 1957

After World War II, the blueberry displaced the strawberry as the Bellevue fruit. The annual Blueberry Festival (1951 to 1961) replaced the Strawberry Festival. Blueberry pies and a Blueberry Festival Princess crowned the celebration. Arthur’s Bakery baked all the pies from 1957-1959 using Overlake Blueberry Farm berries in their recipe for “Arthur’s Blueberry Festival Pie”. 

Today one can hear happy chatter in multiple languages among the blueberry bushes as people of all ages gather to pick, converse and experience the delights of outdoor activity. It is thanks to Bellevue and its visionaries that the blueberries and local farm history has been preserved for the public to enjoy.

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Resources:

Eastside Heritage Center archives

Bellevue Parks and Community Resources

Blueberry Culture, Gardenology.org - Plant Encyclopedia and Gardening wiki

Eastside Heritage Center book, Images of America: Bellevue Post World War II Years. Arcadia Publishing 2014

Eastside Heritage Center book, Images of America: The East Side.  Arcadia Publishing 2006

Knauss, Suzanne book,  Culinary History of a Northwest Town - Bellevue, Washington. Eastside Heritage Center publishing 2007

Three Bellevue Parks

BY margaret Laliberte, EASTSIDE HERITAGE CENTER VOLUNTEER

The Vertical File at Eastside Heritage Center is a treasure trove of original miscellany—largely newspaper clippings—organized into hundreds of topics pertaining to Eastside history.  An old-fashioned browse through a manila file is likely to turn up intriguing and unexpected tidbits for those with a love of our local history.  Take the Bellevue Parks files, for example.  Here’s a sample of some little-known and/or long forgotten stories about three Bellevue parks.

Enatai Park’s “Crater.”  The park, at 10661 S.E. 25th St., is a peaceful sanctuary of big left maple and conifers.  But to access the picnic tables and children’s play area the visitor must make a steep descent into what appears to be a deep crater.  How can this be?  An article by local historian Lucile McDonald dated October 23, 1983 (newspaper unknown) solves the mystery.  At the same time that the first floating bridge between Mercer Island and Seattle was being built in the late 1930s, crews were also improving the old roadway leading east to North Bend to create the four-lane Sunset Highway.  The local Lakeside Gravel Company excavated a large gravel deposit on the site of today’s park to provide surfacing material for the new roadway.  Once the quarry was no longer needed, the crater was used for while as a garbage dump until local residents stymied that use.  The property was sold in 1940, and in 1950 the owner sold the property to the City of Bellevue.

Brian Goldbloom’s “Ruin”

McCormick Park’s granite “ruin.”  A familiar sight in the narrow park that runs along the north side of N.E. 12th St. in downtown Bellevue, across from the Belletini residence, is the enigmatic granite construction that some might feel looks like a ruined cathedral.  Its backstory can be found in a June 23, 1989 Journal American editorial.  The sculptor, Brian Goldbloom, created numerous pieces of public art in the Pacific Northwest during that era, working mainly with natural stone materials.  According to the editorial, his vision of this creation was something that would add a sense of the past to Bellevue, which he felt is too young to have a deep sense of time and place.  He also wanted to create something that would, in his words, “draw people in so they’d want to hang around.”  Ironically, the current pandemic created the circumstances that have drawn small groups of two or three locals at a time to sit on the stone pieces of this artwork to socialize.

Bellefields Nature Park, Bellevue American newspaper clipping.

Bellefields Nature Park’s tikis and totem.  The separate identity of this early park has vanished today, merged into the larger Mercer Slough Nature Park. The land for the original Bellefields Nature Park, at the north end of the slough and running between 118th Ave. N.E. and Bellevue Way, was purchased by the City of Bellevue in 1957.  Because of the deep deposits of peat underlying the site, original plans to develop tennis courts and a golf course had to be shelved. As  Lucile McDonald explained in a 1983 article, “the greens would be bouncy,” and costs to develop the area would be prohibitive. So Siegfried Semrau, the city’s park’s director, decided to develop  a “nature park.” Boys from the state’s Youth Corps built a network of trails through the park over four years, earning  $25 a week for their work. A 1969 article in the Bellevue American noted that the park department’s sign maker, Earl “Bud” Baunsgard. “ has created several wood carvings… to surprise the hiker as he strolls along the trails.  Two tikis and a totem pole greet park users with a trio of brightly colored frogs.”

The tikis and totem are long gone, but a “heritage” park sign built by Baunsgard still stands in the city’s Killarney Park.

Resources

Eastside Heritage Center Archives

Sharp Cabin

This is the third in the series of “Early Bellevue Cabins”.  The Sharp Cabin (also known as the Sharp Cottage), can be found at the Bellevue Botanical Garden. This structure has also been moved multiple times and has undergone changes to its appearance.

2014.033.073 - Sharp Cabin at Bellevue Botanical Garden

2014.045.003 - The interior of Cottonwood Cabin kitchen, May 1985.

In 1883, James Sharp applied for an 80- acre homestead located near NE 8th and 124th Ave NE in Bellevue.  He built a one- story log cabin on his claim and later built a more permanent dwelling.  Both were on the property when it was sold in 1926 as part of the Cottonwood Hill Plat.  An Armenian-American family, the Davajian’s, eventually settled on the site and remodeled the larger home in 1932.  Three generations lived there until it was sold in January 1952.  Several owners followed and eventually, the wooden stilts under the cabin were removed.  The second floor became the entry just it appears today.

In 1989, the property was sold and scheduled to be developed as townhouses.  Scott Parker was renting the cabin and approached the Bellevue Historical Society and the Bellevue Parks Department about preservation of the dwelling.  It was moved to the Botanical Garden and eventually relocated when the garden was renovated.  It is now used as a meeting room for volunteer groups and staff.

2004.030.003 - Side view of the Sharp Cabin, 1964.

 Please walk around the cabin and observe the carved scrollwork with two eight-pointed stars cut into the wood.  The style of workmanship is rarely found in cabins and perhaps was done by a local craftsman.  John Zweifenhofer, a cabinet maker, lived south of Northup Way, and could have been the mystery builder.  He passed away in 1910 so could have been responsible for the second -floor artistry.

Unfortunately, the cabin is not open to the public, so the inside features must be viewed from the windows. The walls are paneled and at the peak of the gabled ceiling, there is a cluster of three wooden eight-cornered stars. An interpretive sign is located near one of the garden paths.

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Resources

Eastside Heritage Center Archives

Mercer Slough Farms

BY Barb williams, EASTSIDE HERITAGE CENTER VOLUNTEER

For thousands of years Native Americans gathered the rich harvest of plants and animals along the shores of the Mercer Slough. In 1916 when the Ballard Locks were constructed in Seattle, the water level on the Eastside dropped 9-12 feet exposing dry lands such at those along the Mercer Slough. Farmers moved into the area.

Andrew (3rd from left) and Marc (far left) Balatico with workers in fields, c. 1930

EHC Research Collection, courtesy Balatico family

One of the farmers was Andrew Balatico and his brother, Marceliano.  By 1977 they were the only truck farmers in Bellevue. Customers came from far and near to buy their vegetables. The Balatico’s pumpkin patch was well-known to local residents. As orphans in 1926, the brothers immigrated to the United States from the Philippine Islands. They worked on the railroads then moved to Bellevue in 1930 to work for Japanese farmers. After leasing Newport Hills farmland and hiring Japanese workers, the brothers purchased 23 acres near the Mercer Slough. They dynamited the plow-breaking stumps in the peat marsh and added lime to sweeten the acidic soil before anything would grow. Their farm became successful. However, during World War II they feared they would be drafted. But due to a decree issued by President Roosevelt, they were able to continue farming.  In 1985, Andrew sold his property to the City of Bellevue. Much of the old farm is presently covered by the Light Rail parking garage on Bellevue Way SE and is part of the Mercer Slough Nature Park. He passed away in 2002 at the age of 92.

OR/L 79.79.358 - Cecelia Winters, 1917 with produce.

Other people who came to farm were Cecilia and Frederick Winters. In 1917 they bought ten acres of land just north of the Balatico farm. They built one of the most successful wholesale floral businesses of the time specializing in greenhouse-raised azaleas, daffodils and iris.  Fortunately for the Winters, they had purchased carloads of imported Dutch and Spanish bulbs before a ban on imported bulbs was enforced in 1926 due to the spread of an infectious bulb disease. Their bulb business became highly profitable and they were able to build their lovely home “The Winters House”;  the only building in Bellevue on the National Register of Historic Places. Their home exists today along Bellevue Way SE. The Spanish Eclectic style building was built for $32,000 in 1929 by contractor, Anson Ralph Grosvenor. During this time, Cecelia grew vegetables that she and her sons, Walter and Forrest, sold to summer residents in Beaux Arts. In 1937 the Winters sold part of their estate to Andre Ostbo who raised prize-winning rhododendrons in and around the greenhouses that are partially visible today along the Ostbo Loop boardwalk east of the house. He operated his King of Shrubs business there until the 1970s. In 1943, the house and grounds were sold to Frank and Anna Riepl. The Winters eventually moved to Vashon Island where they established a business specializing in carnations. By 1988 the property had been purchased by the City of Bellevue and included in the Mercer Slough Nature Park.

Bill Pace at Overlake Blueberry Farm. Seattle Times, 2003.

The boggy, acidic soils of the Mercer Slough may not have been ideal for the Balatico and Winters farms, but it was perfect for growing blueberries which have been in the area since 1933. About this time Lee Denison settled on land located between the Balatico and Winters farms. This became the Overlake Blueberry Farm. Denison’s daughter, Mrs. E.L. Van Tine helped develop the business and cultivate the fields. Since then there have been changes. Nancy Harding operated the farm for 14 years until her lease ran out and the City of Bellevue wanted to keep the blueberries while preserving the natural environment and opening the Mercer Slough Nature Park to the public. Bill Pace, Bellevue resident and owner of Bill Pace Fruit and Produce, leased the farm in 2002 which he successfully managed until he was forced out by the Light Rail operation that presently runs through the property. The public has enjoyed fresh produce and “U” pick blueberries at the Overlake Blueberry Farm for over fifty years. The farm still exists and will most likely continue to be managed by the City of Bellevue.

Sources:

Eastside Heritage Center Archives

Books:

Eastside Heritage Center,  Lake Washington The East Side

Lucile McDonald,  Bellevue Its First 100 Years