Cold War Defense on the Eastside: Redmond, Washington and the Nike Missile Project

Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.

After the discovery of the atomic bomb during World War II, Washington state became a major site of nuclear production and defense. From fabricating uranium cores which fuel atomic production to the 12 bases established to protect us from a Russian nuclear attack, Washington is at the heart of the Cold War legacy. Hanford Site produced the uranium cores that were used in the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the summer of 1945. This site in the middle of the state, still houses a large amount of nuclear waste from this time period, although the last reactor was shut down back in 1987.

Here on the Eastside we have a different kind of legacy around the Cold War in our communities. Starting after Russians smuggled plans for the creation of their own bomb from the USA and had their first successful test in 1949, America started thinking about atomic defense. Fear of a nuclear holocaust became a huge concern of the public and perhaps fueled the creation and expansion of the Nike Missile Project. This led to bases in the Kenmore/Bothell area, Issaquah, and Redmond.

Named for the goddess of victory in Greek mythology, this project involved the creation of several high-speed missiles that would be able to stop aircraft and perhaps even warheads still in flight. It also created a need for several strategically placed bases which would be able to launch missiles. One of these bases was built in Redmond. Known as Nike Missile Base S-13 and S-14, the Redmond site consisted of a fire control area located two miles up a hill from the launcher in the valley below. The site was said to be located on 95th off Avondale by locals at the time of operation, but some articles say residents knew little about what went on there during its seventeen years of operation from 1957-1974.

Photo from the Sammamish Valley News shows missiles readying for launch (only a test) at the Redmond facility.

This base was a double launch site which meant it had twice the missiles of similar bases. Although originally run by the US army the base passed into National Guard hands officially in 1958. It was operated during its entire existence on a 24-hour, 365 days a year basis. Still, it seems soldiers stationed there were not overly burdened by the work.

Winning repeatedly in contests of skill around tracking and launching missiles, showing they had time to practice, they also enjoyed a fair amount of recreation. In September 2006 Bill Sunde, who was stationed at the base from 1962-64, recounted to the Redmond Recorder how being stationed at the base was the best unit he’d ever been assigned to. It seems much of the soldier’s time there was spent in leisure as he recollected multiple recreational activities as perks of the job including ping-pong, tennis, basketball, volleyball, speedboats, rowboats, fishing equipment, and water skiing.

After being decommissioned in 1974 the National Guard continued to have a base nearby at the control site on 95th Avenue NE and 172nd. The property, consisting of two sites with a collective acreage of about 40, passed into the hands of the Lake Washington School District. Although there was talk of it becoming a park as early as 1987, for many years the site was dilapidated and covered in graffiti as the base sat and rotted. One report of a visitor during this time said someone had spray painted the words “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here,” the famous inscription over the gates of hell in Dante’s Inferno, over a door. It is a far cry from the words reported by William Schuize, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Aviation Editor in 1960 as being over the door, “Coles Imperamus” meaning “We Rule the Skies”.

Like all missile defense sites involved in the Nike Project, the Redmond Nike Missile Base never launched a missile defensively. Still by the time the project was conceptualized in 1952 the military was already developing an improved version. The Nike Ajax Missile was replaced by the Nike Hercules and the Nike Hercules was replaced by the Nike Zeus starting in 1960. Across America, sites were dedicated to the development of nuclear warheads, production of nuclear supplies, and storage of/defense against nuclear attack. Today, we see much of this as a fear-based response to the potential of a nuclear holocaust in which military-fueled economies thrived.

Resources

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/nike-nuclear-missile-site-s1314

http://warbirdsnews.com/warbird-articles/abandoned-nike-missile-bases-united-states.html

https://www.historylink.org/File/9711

http://choosewashingtonstate.com/research-resources/about-washington/brief-state-history/

Influenza Outbreak of 1918 In Washington State

Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.

Eastside Stories

As we live through the Covid-19 pandemic it can be harrowing and comforting to know that our nation and world has endured an outbreak like this before. In many ways the reactions are similar and the precautions necessary to slow the spread of viral infection remain the same—stay home, keep your distance, and wear your mask. The Influenza Outbreak (also often referred to as the Spanish Flu Epidemic) of 1918-19 occurred right as World War I (WWI) was coming to an end and soldiers returning home were responsible for its far reach.

Many don’t realize WWI killed 16 million, but this strain of influenza killed over 50 million worldwide. With so many young people lost to WWI, the deadly strain of influenza which overtook so many was made more concerning as it took the lives of young people just as readily as vulnerable populations. Like Covid-19, the flu affected people differently, some victims died within the first few hours of showing symptoms while others held on for several days and some recovered and lived healthy lives. At the time, health officials speculated as to whether asymptomatic carriers could pass on the disease and moved quickly to develop a vaccine to slow its spread.

The origin of the term Spanish Flu also had to do with the war. The reason it is often called the “Spanish Flu” is because neutral Spain freely reported cases and deaths, without a need to suppress information as many warring nations did. The origins of the disease remain unknown today. Here in Washington, the illness originated with returning solders at Camp Lewis and the Bremerton Naval Base, and from a train full of solders arriving in Seattle via Philadelphia. The first record of the disease in Western Washington was recorded on October 3, 1918.

For most, public education was the first attempt to slow the spread and contain the virus. Being in Washington, local populations found themselves lucky as those in charge of public health monitored the spread from the East Coast and attempted to prepare for an outbreak. Dr. T.D. Tuttle, a medical man who had headed the Montana state tuberculosis sanitarium, was Washington’s Health Commissioner in 1918. He fought to put social distancing rules in place and shut down gatherings. By October 30, 1918, Washington State passed a law requiring people to wear gauze masks in public.

Front page of The Reflector, October 20, 1918.

Closer to the Eastside we have some documentation from The Lake Washington Reflector. The Reflector reported that on October 20, 1918, “Nearly Everybody was Laid up with the ‘Spanish Influenza’”.  This first page article explains how even people who weren’t sick didn’t feel comfortable leaving their home to get news stories for the paper. This is not surprising since most of the Reflectors' content consisted of “visiting news”, essentially having people go door to door to inquire about local events and personal milestones. Not very conducive for social distancing. Even rural areas were hit hard during the Influenza Outbreak in 1918, perhaps because populations there lacked immunities.

We know people here were affected though. On November 1, 1918, the Reflector issued a poem by Miss Emma Conway which cautions people to stay inside and avoid the flu, a foreshadowing for the leniency on quarantine that Armistice Day would bring. November 13, 1918, Armistice Day, marked the official end of World War I. People were so relieved to see the end of the biggest war in history at the time that they took to the streets. The ban on masks was lifted and gatherings resumed as citizens overlooked the danger in order to celebrate victory. All this of course led to a resurgence of the disease which peaked in Washington state in December 1918.

Even after Armistice Day, Tuttle shut down dances and enforced forms of social distancing such as making people sit in every-other row in the theater and removing those who appeared sick. Tuttle proposed more bans within the state such as limiting the amount of people who could come to witness the State Senate in action, but the Olympia City Council rejected the bans. There was an official meeting of the State Board of Health which voted down Tuttle’s plan soon after.

Poem Submitted by Emma Conway entitled “The Flu”. Published in the November 1, 1918 edition on The Reflector.

In February 1919 Tuttle was fired 3 years into his 5-year appointment because of the politics around not letting people celebrate. His original quarantine and social distancing rules truly did slow the spread of the virus and kept big cities like Seattle and the surrounding region from being hit hard. This is obvious when you compare Tuttle’s response with the Heath Officer of Spokane, J.B. Anderson. He wasn’t too worried and issued a warning statement about how to prevent the virus’s spread without much to enforce it. Even as the death-toll rose he hesitated to enforce quarantine procedures. Spokane’s death-rate was higher than most rising to 6% during the epidemic.

After Armistice Day though, Olympia, Seattle and even Bellevue didn’t heed Tuttle’s advice either. The Lake Washington Reflector's front page, dated January 10, 1919, shows that Bellevue held a “Big Ball” at the Bellevue Clubhouse even as the illness continued to affect local populations. The following winter the disease didn’t return in as much force and by 1920 there were few if any cases reported. The strain of influenza which caused so much destruction hasn’t made an impact like it did in 1918-19 to this day.

Resources

https://spokanehistorical.org/items/show/224

https://content.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/WWI/influenza.html

https://www.heraldnet.com/news/fears-masks-and-deaths-spanish-flu-hit-hard-102-years-ago/

https://www.archives.gov/exhibits/influenza-epidemic/

https://www.heraldnet.com/news/fears-masks-and-deaths-spanish-flu-hit-hard-102-years-ago/

Eastside Heritage Center Archive

https://www.historylink.org/File/20300

https://www.influenzaarchive.org/cities/city-seattle.html#

O'Neal, Claire. The Influenza Pandemic of 1918. Mitchell Lane Publishers, Inc., 2008.

Eastside Stories: Twin Valley Dairy

Article by Carla Trsek

Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.

Kelsey Creek Farm is a very popular city park in Bellevue, but its agricultural story goes back several decades before Bellevue incorporated. The land was first farmed by the Duey family in the 1920s and 1930s. William Duey worked on a farm in Skagit Valley, but when he heard about land available for rent in what is now Bellevue, he moved with his wife and three children in 1921 to start their own dairy.

The land belonged to the Haller family, a Seattle family with extensive Eastside land holdings. In addition to the land that became Kelsey Creek Farm, the wealthy family also owned the land that became the Glendale Golf Course along the park’s northern border.

The Duey’s first barn before the 1933 fire. Note the angled roofs. Photo courtesy City of Bellevue.

It was far from ideal farmland. Most of the property was either covered with stumps or soaked in wetlands. The stumps came from the Hewitt-Lea Lumber Company, which had logged the site around the turn of the century. Additionally, no roads connected the farm to the small town of Bellevue. The only access to the property was a railroad bed with the ties still in place. It had only gone out of service two years before the Duey family moved in.

William and Pearl Duey and their three children, Fernley, Alta, and William Jr., quickly got to work pulling out stumps, building a house, building a barn and establishing a herd of dairy cows. They milked the cows twice a day and delivered milk, cream, and butter to customers once a day. They named their farm Twin Valley Dairy in honor of the two valleys that parallel either side of the barns.

The Duey’s second barn after the 1933 fire. Note the rounded roof. This barn still stands at Kelsey Creek Farm and houses the park’s resident animals. Photo courtesy City of Bellevue.

The Twin Valley Dairy provided a good life for their family but they were not always financially secure. Especially during the 1930s when people who couldn’t pay for their milk in cash, they would offer services or products from their own farms in return. Additionally, the logging operation that preceded the farm and bedeviled the Dueys as they pulled out stump after stump at least provided the family with a second source of income. There was so much downed cedar on the property left over from the logging operation that Mr. Duey cut and sold cedar fence posts.

The heart of the dairy were the cows. The herd was made of a mix of dairy breeds common during the period, including Brown Swiss, Guernsey, and Jersey. They kept about thirty milking cows, but the total bovine population rose and fell with the births and sales of calves. The cows lived year-round in the pastures, although they probably were taken into the barn for milking and possibly for calving. In a small barn just south of the main barn, milk was bottled and cream and butter were made.

In 1933, the barn and 90 tons of hay stored in its hay loft burned to the ground. The Duey’s youngest son Fernley remembered that “the whole hillside was afire. It was a mess. We had to milk the cows and tie them to a fence for several days until another barn could be built.” That new barn was built amazingly quickly. Neighbors and hired hands put up the structure in just a few weeks. The Duey’s continued to provide milk, cream, and butter to Eastside customers through the end of the decade.

William and Pearl Duey in front of their milk truck, c. 1930s. Photo courtesy City of Bellevue.

At the beginning of World War II, the Duey family moved off the property and the Haller family sold it to a man named John Michael. The Duey family sold him their business, including their cows. Michael expanded the dairy herd and built a larger barn to the north of the Duey’s barn with material purchased from Dunn Lumber in Seattle.

All three barns are protected as part of the city’s park. The small milk barn is now painted red and serves as offices for the site’s staff. The Duey’s big barn is now painted white and houses the park’s resident farm animals and Michael’s larger white barn serves as classrooms and offices. In a city now dominated by growing business interests, Kelsey Creek Farm provides a tangible connection to Bellevue’s agricultural history.

References:

Harvey, David W. “Historical Analysis of Kelsey Creek Community Park Barns Bellevue, Washington.” For Kovalenko Architects and City of Bellevue Parks and Recreation Department. October 1991.

Jones and Jones. “Kelsey Creek Community Park Renovation Plan.” City of Bellevue Department of Parks and Recreation. June 1993.

McDonald, Lucile. “Kelsey Creek Park land still being farmed.” Journal American. April 23, 1979.

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Our Mission To steward Eastside history by actively collecting, preserving, and interpreting documents and artifacts, and by promoting public involvement in and appreciation of this heritage through educational programming and community outreach.

Our Vision To be the leading organization that enhances community identity through the preservation and stewardship of the Eastside’s history.

Eastside Stories: Airfields of the Eastside

Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.

Eastside Stories

Article by Margaret Laliberte

At the end of World War II veterans who had become pilots during their years in the military returned to civilian life, enthusiastic about using their new skills.  The entrepreneurs among them envisioned a future in which thousands of Americans could be taught to fly, and then own, small planes. They’d fly on business or take their families out for a weekend spin. With relatively inexpensive insurance and availability of war-surplus airplanes, flying was an activity seen as accessible to even middle-class hobbyists. Vets who hadn’t been pilots could use the G.I Bill to learn to fly.

The Eastside was a player in this post-war phenomenon of “general aviation” (non-military, non-commercial). Four little air fields sprang up during the 1940s: Issaquah’s Sky Ranch, north of I-90 and west of East Lake Sammamish Parkway; the Bellevue Air Field across I-90 from where Eastgate developed; the North Seattle Air Park on Finn Hill near Kirkland across from St. Edward Seminary; and the Lake (or Mercer Inlet) Air Field where Newport Shores now lies. They’re all gone now, buried under development. Only at Eastgate will a remnant of the old airfield land eventually become a new Bellevue park or possibly a sports facility. 

First to appear, in 1941, and longest to endure, was the Seattle Sky Ranch, on land leased by Ab Davies and Al Lockwood from the Pickering family between Lake Sammamish and Highway 10 (the “Sunset Highway,” now designated I-90).  Until 1951 the partners operated the grass field as a flight school, training vets funded by the G.I. Bill. When that funding source ended, they closed down their operation. In 1961 Linn Emrich, a plot and Air Force veteran, leased the field and renamed it the Skyport. He founded the Seattle Sky Sports Club, which featured parachute jumping, gliding, even ballooning. The Sky Ranch hosted the National Parachute Championships in 1963. After the land was sold in 1975, years of bitter litigation followed as the new owners tried to terminate Emrich’s lease. In May 1987 a special election was held to approve a $5.2 million bond issue to purchase the property for a park. The measure failed by just 5%. Meanwhile, the legal battle ended when Emrich finally vacated the field.  Two final attempts to halt development were mounted by citizen groups arguing that the developers had not provided sufficient information about potential for flooding to Issaquah’s council nor satisfied the Army Corps of Engineers requirements for an assessment of the impact on the wetland area. But a Superior Court judge held that the city had acted properly, and the development of a huge business park and shopping center at Pickering Place moved forward. In 2002 Robert Pickering, former owner of the property, reminisced about the old days. "It was so nice back then on summer evenings, sitting there watching the parachuting. The divers didn't always land in the field. Some would land in the valley, some in trees in my back yard, some in blackberry bushes."

Bellevue Air Field was built by a World War I air veteran, Arthur Nordhoff, King County and later Seattle city counsel. (His daughter Nancy had flown planes in the wartime Women’s Airforce Service Pilots or WASPs.) The field was located just north of Highway 10 and east of 156th Ave. N.E. Back in 1942, the Port of Seattle had favored this area for a major airport rather than one at Bow Lake, where land was much more expensive and more subject to foggy conditions. But United Airlines convinced Tacoma and Seattle to partner on a site at Bow Lake, and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport was the result. The little air field built on the Eastside instead had a paved runway, licensed repair facility, and hangars for private planes. A schematic in a 1959 FAA inspection report showed a shower and rest room building among the various buildings. A 1969 article in the Bellevue American newspaper noted that private aviation was still a growing business. One hundred twenty-five planes were parked at the airfield, which saw 80,000 take-offs and landings in a year.

But the air field was becoming problematic. No ground navigation was ever installed. Eastgate had developed, and when weather required landings to the North, pilots had to navigate over the high hills to the south, subdivisions and an increasingly busy I-90, before touching down startlingly close to the highway. In 1978 the field was sold to a Boston-based office park firm, but flights continued until February 1983. The journal Seattle Business bemoaned, “How long can a major urban center like Bellevue be without an airport”? Although much of the property now houses office buildings and a hotel in the I-90 Business Park, 14-1/2 acres of the old air field were purchased by the City of Bellevue in 2003. Development of the land into either a park or a large sports facility is currently ongoing. 

Sources:

“Great-Grandma Operates Air Field on Mercer Island [sic],” Seattle Times, July 4, 1946, p.7

Irving Petite, “Frontiers in the Sky,” 1951

Seattle Business magazine, October 1983, p.33

“Vacation Via Air Lanes,” a 1946 article by Helen Call, newpaper unknown

“There once was an airport in Inglewood,” March 26, 1989 article by Barbara Brachtl, probably in Bellevue Journal American

Numerous Seattle Times articles

http://www.airfields-freeman.com/WA/Airfields_WA_Seattle.htm

https://mynorthwest.com/974191/searching-for-traces-of-bellevues-phantom-airfield/?

https://historylink.org/File/4194

Photo: Airfield in Eastgate, located north of the intersection of SE Eastgate Way and 158th Ave SE, just north of I-90.

Eastside Stories: Local Coal Mining Part 2

Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.

Article by Steve Williams

The Bagley Mine pictured above shows electrification and some of the 163,000 ton of coal produced in 1898. By then the hard-working mules and tiny steam engines had been replaced by electric haul motors called “tugs.” Then in 1905 the largest and most productive mine of all was opened just to the south. It was called the Ford Slope and went down five levels to 1,500 feet. At each level, horizontal gangways tunneled into the coal both east and west. Rock tunnels north and south gave access to a number of other coal seams, but all of the cars were pulled up the Ford Slope, and all of the coal was washed and sorted at the Coal Creek bunkers.

Today, the arched concrete entry to the Ford Slope has a picnic table, coal car and a large photo kiosk next to it at Cougar Mountain Regional Wildland Park. Downstream in Coal Creek Park, just across Lakemont Blvd, there is an impressive airshaft (sealed 20 feet down) and seven more interpretive signs explaining the 100-year history of local coal mining. Today, long portions of the rail grade serve as beautiful and easy walking trails in Coal Creek and May Creek Parks (again with good interpretive signs).

Our Northwest coal miners came from 14 or more European countries. The English, Welsh, Italians and Finns were prominent at Newcastle. There were also some local Indians, as well as black miners from Missouri who settled at Kennydale. Chinese laborers who settled at China Creek built most of the railroad, and Scandinavian loggers built two immense 1,200-foot long trestles over the May Creek valley. Coal trains ran twice a day, and the trip to the Seattle docks took just over an hour (something we commuters stuck in traffic might envy today).

The end of ‘Big’ mining here happened when the Coal Creek bunkers burned down in 1929 – just as demand for coal was shrinking due to a global financial crisis (the Great Depression). The California-based Pacific Coast Coal Company decided to close up shop, and the company-owned town was dismantled. Anything of value was carted off or sold, including miners’ homes, which were offered at $25 apiece. The rail line was abandoned in 1933 and the rails pulled out by 1937. Several local miners then started their own independent operations: Baima & Rubitino, Bianco Coal, Harris, Scalzo & Strain. However, oil was fast replacing coal as the fuel of choice, and after World War II both demand and production fell off quickly. The last local mines closed in 1963, a full century after coal was first discovered on the Eastside.

Coal fueled trains, steamships, factories and businesses. Seattle became a major port city, with the population of King County expanding from just over 300 in 1860 to well over 43,000 by 1890, and just over one million in the 1960’s. The legacy of coal for the Eastside has been a skilled, diverse and ambitious population and a landscape now preserved for housing and recreation. A half-century of history and science has now taught us that burning any carbon fuel (coal, oil, wood or natural gas) makes our planet hotter. If we are to survive globally, the history we make now needs to be one of converting to clean energy as quickly as possible.

Above photograph: A group of Bagley Seam miners are shown here. Photograph courtesy of Oliver Rouse and the Newcastle Historical Society

Eastside Stories: The Highland School Bell

Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.

Article by Barb Williams

Stevenson School has a wonderful thing,

If you touch it, you can make it ring.

It rang out over the countryside,

And graced the bell tower with scholarly pride.

The Bellevue School District is in the process of bringing its schools up to date technologically, educationally and facility-wise.  A new Wilburton Elementary School was completed in 2019 on Main Street at Wilburton Hill. A new Stevenson Elementary School was recently completed on NE 8th Street. And construction, of a remodeled Highland Middle School on Bel-Red Road, is in progress. Historically, two of these schools have something in common. But which two? The answer lies in the large bell that hangs at the front of Stevenson Elementary School. If you ring the bell, you will hear the deeply melodic sounds of history that rang out over the Highland countryside where the bell began it’s journey. So let us go back to a time before the bell arrived and was placed in the bell tower of the Old Highland School.

The Highland School bell in front of the new Stevenson Elementary School on NE 8th Street

In the mid-1880s, Matt Murdock and William Shiach came from Manitoba to settle in the Highland area of Bellevue. Murdock built a log cabin on his land, but decided to leave the area. At that time he sold the cabin and property to William Shiach. In 1887 the cabin became the first school in the area. It was known as the Claim Cabin School. There were thirteen students and one teacher; Mr. Daniel Collins, who was paid forty dollars per month. He worked a three-month term. The only roads nearby were the “Newcastle Trail” that ran close to the present 140th NE and connected Redmond to the coal mines at Newcastle. The other road (now 24th NE) ran from Lake Washington to the Highlands. Both were small, unpaved roads. It was along these roads that students came to the Claim Cabin School.

In 1890 a new school was built on an acre of land. It was called The Highland School. A.B. Huxford gave the land to the Highland School District No. 57. The land was given with the provision that it be used as a school for the next ten consecutive years. The building was improved and additions were added between 1910 and 1912. But the excitement came when in 1915 a huge 200 pound bell was placed in the bell tower. It’s melodic sound could be heard far and wide calling the children to school at 8:30am and again when it was time for students to enter the schoolhouse. The bell became the time piece for the local people. Perhaps Mrs. Tosh and Miss Albrecht, teachers at the Old Highland School in 1916, summoned their students to class by ringing the bell.  However, they were not the only teachers to ring the bell, Mr. Walter Stevenson may have rung it as well because he began teaching at the school in 1933. Then in 1935 he and the bell were moved to a new brick Highland school that was built at 15027 NE Bel-Red Road. The huge bell was set in the front yard between two concrete stantions. The school was built with Works Progress Administration (WPA) funds. The Old Highland School was sold to the W.A. Ashton family who fixed it up as a residence. They lived in the historic schoolhouse from the 1940s to 1960s. In the following years, the building was occupied by several businesses. Mrs. Camille Armor saved it from demolition when it was threatened by I-520 construction. The building was moved 400 yards from its original site to NE 29th Place. Corporate Express bought the historic building but it was later razed due to further road construction.

In 1955, a third Highland School was built at 142nd Avenue and NE 8th in Bellevue. The   brick building from the Highland Elementary School on Bel-Red Road was incorporated into the buildings of the new Highland Middle School. The old brick building is still visible today.

Mr. Stevenson, who had been a principal at the Old Highland School and also at the new brick Highland Elementary School, became principal at the NE 8th Street Highland Elementary School. He and the bell moved together to the new school. When he retired in 1964, the Highland Elementary School was renamed Stevenson Elementary School. The bell hung in a bell garden at the school with a plaque that read, “Stevenson Bell Garden dedicated May 31, 1991 by the students, staff and parents of Stevenson Elementary School to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Highland School bell originally dedicated September 23, 1915 and to commemorate the heritage of the Highland School 1887 - 1890 - 1935 - 1957  Walter S. Stevenson Elementary School”

Presently the bell and plaque have been moved to the new Stevenson Elementary School. You can experience both there --- a piece of tangible history.

Old Highland School teachers: Mrs. Tosh and Miss Albrecht 1916.

Many thanks to the Bellevue School District for preserving the bell: a treasured and historic artifact. Its journey through the Highland Schools is fascinating. And now you know what the Highland Middle School and Stevenson Elementary School have in common.

The Highland School bell in front of the new Stevenson Elementary School on NE 8th Street

Sources:

Bellevue Schools Timeline,   by Mary Ellen Piro

The Little Red Schoolhouse,   by Dixie Wynn

Eastside Stories: The Wake Robin Lodge

Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.

Article by: Barbara Williams

Its Sunday today, so where shall we go?

To the Wake Robin Lodge, don’t you know.

Receptions, dancing and chicken for all.

Teas and music, you’ll have a ball!

The Wake Robin Lodge was the former Enatai home of Sam Krueger. It was built around the time of the First World War (1914-1918). In 1926, Mr Krueger leased the building and the land to two African-American men from Seattle: A. Cunningham and C. James. They planned to open it as a roadhouse or restaurant. It would be the first African-American enterprise on the Eastside. They named it the Wake Robin Lodge. Wake Robin is the name of our local bird, the Spotted Towhee. It is also the South Carolina name for the Trillium flower. Both the bird and the flower are indigenous and common to this area.

The new owners remodeled the building to resemble a semi-bavarian chalet with a large stone fireplace in the main room, porches, wide front steps at the entry, inside balconies around three sides, and beautiful hardwood floors throughout the building. The Lodge was totally self-sufficient. An orchard with fruit trees framed the long driveway along which Mr. Cunningham often drove his shiny Nash car with wooden spoke wheels. There were chicken sheds, a water tank, a dairy and large vegetable garden. Almost everything that went on the tables was produced on-site. Not only that, being at the top of the hill, the building sported a lovely view to the east ..... the perfect destination for a day in the country.

When the two men opened the Lodge for business on Saturday, February 19, 1927, people were curious to sample the new restaurant. Word went out about the delicious chicken dinners, fresh vegetables and fruit, music and dancing, as well as, teas, receptions and celebrations. Visitors came flocking by ferry boat and automobile from places like Seattle and the surrounding towns to enjoy a good time. The Lodge was located just south of the junction of the paved Lake Washington Highway (Bellevue Way SE) and the Mercer Island Enatai road (108th Avenue SE) with a turn onto the long driveway (presently, SE 23rd Street). Sunday full course chicken dinners were served from 2 pm to 9 pm for $1.50 per plate. To make reservations visitors could phone: Lakeside 126. The food was delicious and the waiters, excellent. Waiters were older African American men and sometimes students from Garfield High School in Seattle. The students usually took the Leschi to Medina ferry. They worked late at night washing dishes and making five dollars a night.

Bellevue High School celebrated its 1933/1934 Junior-Senior banquet at the Wake Robin Lodge. Many celebrations happened at the Lodge including the wedding reception of Miss LaReine Renfro to Mr. Roland Putnam Burnham on June 30, 1934.

This special country inn situated just up the hill from Cecilia and Frederick Winters’s home and floral business on Bellevue Way SE, was a very popular outing for many people. However, when the Great Depression hit the country between the years of 1929 to 1933, it affected businesses such as the Wake Robin Lodge. People no longer had the money to eat out and the business began to flounder. Soon it closed. The property was then held by The Home Savings and Loan Association and the Lodge sat empty for many years. During that time, Leila Cook Martin and her sister, who grew up next door to the Lodge, loved to explore the grounds and buildings. With permission from their parents, they took their roller skates and skated around the wonderful hardwood floors. The doors were never locked and a Mr. Jones was caretaker of the white leghorn chickens. By 1941 the building was torn down. State Senator, Al Thompson bought the property. The Thompson family built a large house close to where the Lodge had stood and the land was subdivided. Today there are multiple houses in the area. The driveway is labeled SE 23rd Street and there is a sign at a loop in the road that reads “Wake Robin Farm Crescent”. So the Wake Robin Lodge and it’s people live on and with more research it’s light will become brighter and more colorful.

Photo: Aerial view showing the Winters house (light colored building on Bellevue Way SE) and the Wake Robin Lodge building (dark roof, lower left)

Resources:

Eastside Heritage Center Vertical File of newspapers and other ephemera

Book: Culinary History of a Pacific Northwest Town by Suzanne Knauss, 2007

Writings by Leila Cook Martin and her brother, Bill

Photographs:  Eastside Heritage Center data base, Barb Williams

Eastside Stories: Postal Women of the Eastside

Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.

Article from the Eastside Heritage Center

The month of March is Women’s History Month starting in 1986 when Congress adopted the holiday from several states who were already celebrating it. 1987 marked the first year with an official, nationally recognized month honoring women. Here on the Eastside of King County we have a history of remarkable women who rose to the occasion when their family and community needed them. One of the ways was ensuring that packages and correspondence made it to residents who were often far from friends and families as they started a new life. Without email or social media, letters were the only way to get news of the loved ones and keep up with business in other regions. This article discusses some of the women who helped keep the post going since the 1880s.

Isabella Bechtel was the widow of Isaac Bechtel who moved his family from Ontario, Canada after purchasing land in Bellevue. Isabella and her six children arrived in 1885. In 1886 Isaac became the postmaster for the growing town soon to be known as Bellevue, so that correspondence could reach the residents, and importantly, the school. At the time the post office did about $100.00 in business a year.

 On November 14, 1890 Isaac was caught in a logjam near Wildwood Park and killed. The next day Isabella declared that she would take over his duties as postmaster for the region. Isabella 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. Isabella Bechtel also is sometimes credited with naming Bellevue although the origins of the name is disputed. Because her post office needed an official designation when two postal inspectors visited, they titled the location based on the beautiful view from her house.  

After Isabella Bechtel stepped down as postmaster a man named William Ivey took over. Although he held the position for 23 years, under his guidance women were still a part of delivering the post. May Johnson, a Prussian immigrant carried mail from Houghton to Bellevue twice a week. Starting at the age of 41 she carried the mail for $50 a year. May traveled the almost 4 miles armed with a can of pepper to ward off animals.

Likewise, it is said that a woman ran the first post office in Northrup.  Ann Dunn named the location herself after a pioneering family and ran the post office out of her home. In addition to her post office Northup had a school, small store, and a railway stop.

 After these first post offices and basic routes on horseback women continued to make correspondence possible on the Eastside. In 1920 Regina Blackwood became the second woman to run the Bellevue Post office.  During World War One, Donald A. Wilson recalled having to moonlight at other jobs and being assisted by Mrs. Le Huquet for 6 weeks on his route from Newport Shores to Phantom lake and then Lake Sammamish.

Adelaide Belote also assisted him in the early years of the 1900s as he made the move from Seattle to the Eastside. She became in some ways locally famous for her long stint working in the post office all the way into the 40s and 50s. Adelaide Belote served as assistant postmaster for several generations continuing the long history of women in the postal service on King County’s Eastside.

Isabella 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 Bellevue.

May Johnson on her horse. The photo was taken near what is now the intersection of NE 8th and 100th NE.

United States Post Office employees on Nov. 9, 1956. Adelaide Belote sits in the front row four from the right in a collared dress.

Eastside Stories: Local Coal Mining Part 1

Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.

Article by: Steve Williams

It is hard for most of us today, to realize that coal mining was Seattle’s first major industry—centered right here on the east side of Lake Washington. Bands of coal were noted in a local stream in 1863, and that stream has been called “Coal Creek” ever since. The hills south of I-09 contain eleven different coal seams that brought skilled European miners and their families to the area. The mines brought prosperity and growth, and provided a valued export to the entire west coast. Listed below are some key points to remember:

COAL MINING – KEY POINTS

• 100 years at Newcastle/Coal Creek. 1863-1963. (From the time of the Civil War, to construction of the space Needle and Seattle’s World Fair!)

• Coal is carbonized plant material. (Warm swamp vegetation was covered by a rising Pacific Ocean and thousands of pounds of sand and mud from inland rivers. Over the next 35 million years, heat, pressure, and lack of oxygen converted the plants into ‘a compact rock that will burn.’)

• There are 11 coal seams, all tilted down north at an angle of about 42 degrees. This is due to 20 million years of plate tectonics uplifting and rumpling the land, followed by mountain-building. (Mt. Rainier is only 5 million years old!)

• Our coal is Bituminous ‘soft’ coal; 40% carbon 35% gasses. However, it made 10,000 BTUs of heat. Hotter than wood and much more compact – oil replaced coal for the same reason. (One bucket of coal was said to replace 20 stove logs).

• Mined ‘down-slope’ 200 feet, then sideways tunnels (gangways), then up-slope, widened to rooms every other 50 feet. (Pillars were left in-between to hold the roof up.)

• Removal by drilling & blasting with black powder, then pick ‘n shovel. (Coal rolled down to fill mine cars which were then winched up-slope to the surface.)

• 11 million tons dug here. (Enough to fill Seahawks stadium 2 miles high!)

• First railroad in Seattle built to get the coal. Arrived at Newcastle in 1878. (18 wooden trestles; two at May Creek 1200’ long and 138’ high!) Coal sent to San Francisco first by sail then by steamship. – Turned Seattle into a major port.

Bagley Mine Crew circa 1900. Courtesy of Newcastle Historical.

Eastside Stories: Redmond's Great Fire

Eastside Stories is our way of sharing Eastside history through the many events, people places and interesting bits of information that we collect at the Eastside Heritage Center. We hope you enjoy these stories and share them with friends and family.

Article by: Tom Hitzroth

Frontier towns were typically constructed of wood and could be partially or totally destroyed by a fire that started from a chance spark from many different sources. No community large or small was safe from fire and Redmond was no exception.

On October 26, 1889, William E. Sikes purchased a lot from Luke McRedmond and built the first hotel in Redmond. Sikes called it the Valley Hotel. At this time Redmond was still transitioning from the settlement period in its development and it would be another decade before it took on the character of a town.

Sometime in 1904 or early 1905, Herman S. Reed purchased the property from William Sikes and in 1906 Mary Walther began remodeling the Valley Hotel. The new hotel opened for business as the Hotel Walther by May 1, 1907. On May 12, 1908 Mary Walther purchased the property from Herman S. Reed. On March 13, 1910, a fire started in the hotel. The following is a likely progression of the event based on analysis by a senior fire investigator for the Redmond Fire Department of photographs taken on that day by Winfred Wallace together with the reports from the four major Seattle newspapers.

The investigator verified the chimney was the source of the fire, and explained how the fire spread on the third floor. The first photograph below shows the fire’s progression approximately 15 to 20 minutes after it began. The burn pattern on the east end of the third floor (right in the photograph), and destruction to the window frame suggested that the fire reached an intensity that exploded the third floor window. He also determined, from the way the rafters are exposed the north side of the third floor (farthest away in the photograph) burned faster than the south side.

Once the fire had begun a bucket brigade was formed to save the adjoining property. A call for help was put out to the neighboring communities and Kirkland answered the call. The Kirkland firefighters dragged two pieces of equipment four miles to the scene. However, since Redmond was not on a water system the equipment could not be employed effectively. Unable to suppress the fire there were only a couple of alternatives left. They could let the fire burn, contain it the best they could, and hope it didn’t spread to the rest of the town, or they could try a controlled demolition to bring the fire to an end. It was decided to try a controlled demolition.

The building on the right in the second photograph, though damaged by the fire, was brought down by the controlled demolition. The investigator and I discussed the probable placement of dynamite charges that brought the hotel down. Most likely, because the building was 25 feet north of Cleveland Street, Cleveland Street was 60 feet wide, and based on the density of the surrounding buildings, collapsing the hotel toward Cleveland Street would have been the most viable and sensible option. The fire did not completely burn out until the early morning of March 14.

The destruction of the Hotel Walther in 1910 was a major calamity for Redmond particularly as it jeopardized the survival of the town. Through the skill of those unknown individuals who positioned the dynamite charges that helped contain the fire, the only other buildings lost were a small shed and a barn. The upside was that no customer lost personal belongings in the fire, the hotel furnishings were saved, and no one was injured.

Later in 1910 Mrs. Walther rebuilt the Hotel Walther on the northeast corner of Leary Way and Cleveland Street. In 1912 the property was purchased by Harry Evers and renamed it the Grand Central Hotel.

Both photos top and bottom: Walther Hotel burning March 1910. Photographs by Wallace Studio.

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Our Mission To steward Eastside history by actively collecting, preserving, and interpreting documents and artifacts, and by promoting public involvement in and appreciation of this heritage through educational programming and community outreach.

Our Vision To be the leading organization that enhances community identity through the preservation and stewardship of the Eastside’s history.

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