Lazy Husbands Farm

In 1913, the Washington State legislature passed a series of bills that would collectively come to be nicknamed the "Lazy Husband's Act”. They authorized county commissioners to use individuals convicted of family desertion or non-support for municipal labor projects. The individuals' wages would be paid to their wives or families. The plan was designed with the goal to complete King County projects, while financially supporting these families.

Following the passage of the “Lazy Husband’s Act”, King County set about the construction of a detention facility in Bothell. This first stockade assigned tasks like stump clearing and road repair to the inmates. When those municipal projects were completed, the stockade moved to an area between Bothell and Woodinville. This new stockade was tasked with building new roads in the area. Around 1916, the stockade moved again, this time to the Willows.

L 92.002.007 - King County stockade, 1926.

The Willows property was developed by Charles Douglas (C.D.) Stimson. He and his brother Frederick made their fortunes in the lumber industry at the end of the 19th century and purchased several parcels of land in the area. The Willows property was originally conceived as a campsite for duck hunting and fishing, as a weekend getaway for the Stimson family and friends. Eventually, C.D. built a lodge on the land and opened the Willows Shooting club.

Then, in 1916, King County bought the Willows property for $126,000. This became the new home of the Municipal Stockade, where the inmates grew crops or tended dairy cattle - producing food for themselves and the County Poor House. Wives and children still received a stipend for the inmates work.

Left: Map of Willows Property circa 1919, courtesy Road Service Map Vault

Right: Map of Willows Property circa 2022, Google

The Willows stockade faced financial hardship right from its inception. High cost and low yield led to questions about its sustainability as a detention facility. According to some accounts, the inmates intentionally contributed to the farm’s poor output.

“Once put on bread and water, prisoners retired reluctantly to the fields…but proceeded to hoe the roots off plants. Crops withered in hours.”

— Sammamish Valley News, 1967

L 92.002.008 - Men in field going back to stockade, 1926.

There are anecdotes of illicit moonshine production, lax security, and poor management. One inmate reportedly asked for an extension of his sentence, calling the Willows his ‘country home’. Still, for 16 years the farm remained operational.

Finally in 1932, King County closed "The Willows", transferring prisoners to the county jail. In the following decade the farm was sold, the lodge burned down, and the remaining farming implements were turned to scrap to aid in the war-effort.

Resources

Eastside Heritage Center Archives

Hawkinson , L. (2015). Blackberry Preserves The Journal of the Kirkland Heritage Society.

Hollywood Farm (Woodinville). (n.d.). Retrieved October 31, 2022, from https://www.historylink.org/File/20163

Seattle retires Chain Gang and opens the Municipal Workhouse and stockade on Beacon Hill on July 1, 1909. Seattle retires chain gang and opens the Municipal Workhouse and Stockade on Beacon Hill on July 1, 1909. (n.d.). Retrieved October 31, 2022, from https://www.historylink.org/File/3011

Sharp, J. (1967, September 6). From plush drunk tank to cow farm and finally to rockets; history of York Farm traced. Sammamish Valley News.

The Japanese Farms of Early Bellevue

By EHC Youth Volunteer, Grant

Japanese farmers in King County, especially Bellevue, were essential to providing produce to the nearby populations. Most vegetables in the region were grown by Japanese farmers, and certain crops such as strawberries were a specialty of the farmers. However, their farmlands would later be taken from them and become the foundation of modern Bellevue.

Early Japanese immigrants first arrived in Bellevue in 1898, finding work on railroads, sawmills, and canneries, barely making a living while enduring discrimination in immigration, employment, and housing. Many turned to farming, converting land covered with marshes and tree stumps into productive cropland.

Japanese farmers on the Numato Farm in Yarrow Point, Bellevue. 1925

From the Eastside Heritage Center

Through hardships they raised families, ran their own businesses, and developed a lively community life. Japanese Americans worked hard and became a vital part of the local economy, supplying 75% of Bellevue and King County’s vegetables and half the milk supply. The Japanese cleared and settled hundreds of acres of land near the center of what is now downtown Bellevue. Where shopping malls and office buildings stand today, immigrants grew strawberries and vegetables and worked at a local sawmill. Japanese Americans even had a community center located just north of present-day Bellevue Square.

By the 1920s, Bellevue had become famous for its delicious strawberries, a chief crop of many Japanese families. This led to the first annual Bellevue Strawberry Festival being held behind the Main Street school in mid-June 1925. The festival attracted 3,000 visitors, an impressive number for the small community of Bellevue. In 1935, more than 15,000 people attended the festival -- nearly five times the number of people that lived in the small town.

Truck decorated for the 1930 Strawberry Festival in Bellevue.

From Eastside Heritage Center

Most of Bellevue's strawberries at that time were grown by Japanese farmers, who together managed 472 acres of land. The three-day event continued to be held annually until 1942, the year that 60 local Japanese families were forced to go to incarceration camps.

In December of 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, generating a fear of national security across the United States. As a response to these fears, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which led to mass incarceration of all people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast.

Japanese families, knowing that they would lose their homes and belongings, rushed to sell their businesses, properties, and vehicles for next to nothing. On May 20, 1942, Bellevue’s 60 Japanese families, 300 people, were forced to board a train in Kirkland, where they would end up in an incarceration camp located at Tule Lake in Northern California. This camp was the largest of 10 inland incarceration camps.

Japanese farmers occupied many of the 515 vendor stalls at Pike Place Market in 1939. However, during the spring of 1942, crops left by Japanese farmers in Bellevue and elsewhere in the region were not harvested, and white farmers could not fill the gap. The number of stalls at Pike Place Market fell to 196. The Strawberry Festival, which made Bellevue a tourist destination, did not take place that year.

Over in Bellevue, Eastside businessmen, including Miller Freeman, started suburban and urban development, which would transform the city into what we know today. The cleared farmland left by the Japanese farmers became prime real estate for upscale shopping centers and residential areas, that could be made accessible with new highways, including the I-90 bridge which was completed in 1940.

Later, when 11 of the 60 Japanese American farmer families returned to Bellevue in 1945, nothing was the same. Their properties were damaged, they lost their stored possessions, and they experienced financial struggles. This caused many Japanese families to have to move on to other professions as they couldn’t start farming again.

Sources:

https://seattleglobalist.com/2017/02/19/anti-japanese-movement-led-development-bellevue/62732

https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/books/strawberry-days-uprooting-more-than-lives/

https://www.historylink.org/file/4144

https://www.historylink.org/file/298

https://www.historylink.org/File/231

Olga Carlson and the AYP

The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (A-Y-P) is considered to be Washington’s first “world’s fair.”  The A-Y-P was mandated by the Washington State Legislature to provide a venue to display the advantages of living in this region.  It brought prosperity and riches to the Pacific Northwest and Washington state had much to be proud.

Nancy Larson and Olga Carlson, undated. (83.99.19)

The A-Y-P was held on the University of Washington campus between June 1 and October 16, 1909,  and hosted nearly 3 million visitors and tourists. Exhibits were presented by foreign nations, western states, and numerous business, scientific, artistic, and social organizations.

Every day at the fair was special!  Olga Carlson came with her family from what is now Happy Valley, Redmond, for Swedish Day.  She kept a diary and the following is her entry for the day:            

“When I was going to Seattle to see the fair, Nancy, Elsie, Helen, and I wanted Grandpa to come with us.  We begged him to go but he just teased us.  We knew he would buy us something nice, at least he went with us to Seattle.

He took us to see a lion which was very big.  He took us for a ride in a boat on the Yukon River which I liked very much.  We went round three times.  Then he took us for a ride on a train, which frighted me very much.  It went up and down all the time and sometimes it would go through a tunnel.  He took us for a ride on a big wheel called a ferris wheel.  It went round three times and when it came to the top it would stop.  I enjoyed riding on it very much.

He brought us ice cream cones and many nice things which we liked very much.  We went to see the University Grounds two times.  First in the day time and then at night.  We heard many people sing.  We saw the parade.  One of my sister’s friends in Seattle was in the parade.  The day we went to Seattle was called the Swedish Day.”

— Olga Carlson's Diary

Chinese Village during a parade, with Ferris wheel to the right, Pay Streak, Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, Seattle, Washington, 1909. University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections, AYP600

**Swedish Day was celebrated July 31st and had up to 40,352 admissions.  Festivities began with a parade in Swedish national costumes.

Resources: 

Eastside Heritage Center, Lester Olson Collection 

Alaska-Yukon-Pacific  Exposition : A Timeline History:  Alan Stein, Paula Becker and the HistoryLink Staff, 2009

University of Washington Special Collections

4Culture AYP Curriculum Project 2009

The Lake Sammamish Harbor Seal

Strange as it may sound, there once was a seal who lived 25 years in Lake Sammamish. Lovingly referred to as “Butch”, the 250 pound harbor seal was first spotted in 1950. At first, locals thought he might be a muskrat or an otter, but his size quickly ruled out those options. Harbor seals, unlike other pinnipeds, are known to live in in low-salinity waters, like rivers and estuaries. But how did Butch get to Lake Sammamish in the first place?

It is possible that Butch made his way from Puget Sound, through the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks to Lake Union and then Lake Washington, and finally up the Sammamish Slough. There have been other seal sightings in Lake Union and the north end of Lake Washington. There is just one flaw in this explanation; Butch was wearing a collar. It may be more likely that Butch was a pet someone released in the lake once they tired of him.

Butch the seal being lured ashore by Shannon, the golden retriever, in order to capture him for medical treatment (2003.022.006b)

In 1961, Jack Jarvis of the Post-Intelligencer reported that Butch was outgrowing his collar. It was cutting into his neck and blood was found on the dock where he usually slept. Some members of the community worried that this wound would make the seal more aggressive, while others maintained that he was a friendly (albeit mischievous) creature.

There was a brief effort to establish a Save Butch Fund”, designed to facilitate capturing and rehoming Butch at Woodland Park Zoo. This plan was ultimately abandoned due to unknown cost for such an undertaking and the risks associated with tranquilizing the seal.

Butch being netted and taken for medical treatment in 1975 (2003.022.005b)

Over the years, Butch became a known and mostly accepted part of life on Lake Sammamish. He would occasionally bump up against swimmers or wave a flippers at folks on the docks. He established a sort of friendship with several lakeside dogs, although the dogs may not have found his style of “play” very fun. He would sometimes pull a dog a short ways under the water before releasing them to swim back to the surface.

In September of 1975, Butch nearly drowned a dog named Shannon when he dragged her from a dock and into the water. This incident, and a few others, indicated that the seal was becoming a threat to the community. The collar around his neck was still a concern and he likely needed medical treatment as well. Department officials lured Butch from the water with Shannon, netted and sedated him for transport. The aim was to release him into Puget Sound when he had recovered.

Butch the seal netted for medical treatment by the Washington State Dept. of Game in 1975 (2003.022.004b)

Unfortunately, he never made it to Puget Sound. Butch died September 12, 1975, from complications of old age. The collar wound was the most severe problem, which had constricted his breathing. Butch’s skeletal remains were given to the Museum of Natural History at the University of Puget Sound where they were to be used for long-range mammal comparison research.

Resources

Campbell, N. P. (n.d.). Butch the lake sammamish seal . Butch the Lake Sammamish Seal by Nan P. Campbell. Retrieved September 20, 2022, from https://www.historylink.org/File/5542

Do harbour seals (phoca vitulina) housed in fresh water need to be supplemented with salt? VIN. (n.d.). Retrieved September 20, 2022, from https://www.vin.com/apputil/content/defaultadv1.aspx?id=3864854&pid=11257&print=1

Harbor Seal facts. SeaDoc Society. (n.d.). Retrieved September 20, 2022, from https://www.seadocsociety.org/harbor-seal-facts

Team, C. (2018, November 23). Butch the Harbor Seal Lives 25 years in Lake Sammamish. Friends of Lake Sammamish State Park Website. Retrieved September 20, 2022, from https://www.lakesammamishfriends.org/blog/2018/11/21/harbor-seal-lives-25-years-in-lake-sammamish

Eastside Heritage Center Archives

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