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

W.E. Le Huquet, Early Bellevue Booster

BY MARGARET LALIBERTE, EASTSIDE HERITAGE CENTER VOLUNTEER

William Eugene Le Huquet may be best known as the editor and publisher of The Reflector, the Bellevue area’s early newspaper published between 1918 and 1934.  But he was so much more than that as a tireless promoter of Bellevue, its merchants, schools, and community organizations.   The initial masthead of the Reflector provided a clue to his agenda: “Non-partisan, Non-sectarian, Neutral [he later added “Non-individualistic”] A Medium for the Exchange of Ideas relative to local improvement.”

W. E. Le Huquet in front of the family home at 9616 NE 5th St. (1998BHS.16.05)

Although Le Huquet’s overarching goal was to create a vibrant community --“The greatest need  of Reflector Territory is cooperation and you know it.”-- he could hardly be considered nondividualistic or neutral.  He was passionate, creative, ebullient—and, on occasion, plain cantankerous.  Editions of the Reflector illustrated all of those traits as he tirelessly exhorted readers to support local businesses,  join the myriad clubs and organizations that proliferated during the Twenties and Thirties, support such local issues as the public ferry system, fire protection, and local school district, and vote, vote, vote. “Individual patriotism to local endeavors should be our first consideration.”

From the outset, the Reflector was a family affair, and Le Huquet invited his readers to watch and participate.  January 1, 1919, his eldest child, Sylvia, made her appearance as a typesetter—at age six.  “She is learning to set type to help her daddy.  She set up the poem on the front page…Sylvia wishes to become an Editorette.” Over the years, as the eight remaining Le Huquet children were deemed old enough, they all joined the paper’s staff. When twins were born in December 1919, Le Huquet invited his readers to send in suggestions for the babies’ names.  But just a month later he had to announce that one twin, the boy, had not survived. “Our Little Editor was born December 17th 1919 and died January 17, 1920. “

Le Huquet concocted intriguing ways to boost newspaper subscriptions.  In 1920 he announced the Better Reflector Contest.  Subscribers were invited to mail in their criticisms and discovery of errors.  He awarded five points for misspellings; 10 for both unintentional grammar errors and “worthy suggestions.” One-half point was awarded for each cent of new advertising and 100 points for a new subscription.  The winner could choose one of two First Prizes: $25 in cash or a $40 first payment on a $350 lot in the new Lochleven subdivision on Meydenbauer Bay. (Mrs. H. Anderson won first prize and elected to take the payment on the lot.)  To promote both the paper and local clubs and organizations, he agreed to split the proceeds when subscriptions were submitted in a group from a club.

With nine children ultimately attending local schools, Le Huquet pushed for the development of the local school district. He had vigorously supported a school bond measure in 1920 and helped it pass with a 3.5-to-1 margin, after it had been defeated 2-to-1 in 1916.  He ran for the local school board twice, was elected once and then defeated in 1927. He firmly believed that a healthy, growing school system meant a growing business district as well.

Le Huquet served as the first Secretary of the Bellevue District Development Club when it was  founded in 1922. For years he screened movies for the community on Wednesday and Friday evenings at the Bellevue Clubhouse on today’s 100th Ave. N.E. (site of the Boys’ and Girls’ Club).  But it was not always smooth sailing.  In 1927 “Because the children attending the Bellevue Clubhouse movies do not appreciate the admission price of 10c by being quiet during the performance, the price has been raised to 15c on Wednesdays. For the present the price on Fridays will be 10c.  The next move will be to omit children’s prices altogether or admit only those accompanied by parents or guardians.” The unfortunate upshot of this kerfuffle was that the following month the Bellevue District Development Club decided to cancel its sponsorship of the moving pictures program.

Somehow Le Huquet found the time and energy to run a second local business: he produced a variety of flavoring extracts under the Le Huquet label.  They were sold in local groceries from Wilburton to Kirkland and in a few locations in Seattle.

Le Huquet Flavoring Extracts Advertisement, The Reflector, October 6, 1932

W.E. Le Huquet left Bellevue sometime after 1930 and moved to New Jersey, but his family remained and his wife Lilian continued to publish the Reflector. By 1933 Sylvia had become Assistant Manager, Gloria was Chief Compositor, and the rest of the clan were listed as Assistants. But in 1934 the newspaper ceased publication.  By then Bellevue had a second newspaper, the Bellevue American, and the Eastside Journal was published in Kirkland.  The Reflector, “circulating in The Heart of the Charmed Land” with a family of 2500 Readers in Seattle’s Superb Suburbs,” quietly passed from the scene.

Resources

EHC archived collection of Reflectors

Lucile McDonald, Bellevue: Its First 100 Years

Lucile McDonald, “Small Town Printer was Important figure,” Journal American, July 23, 1979

HistoryLink Essay 4146 by Alan J. Stein, 2003, updated 2011

The Eastside’s Gallop’n Gerties

BY MARGARET LALIBERTE, EASTSIDE HERITAGE CENTER VOLUNTEER

Mid-twentieth century America is commonly known as the era of the automobile.  On Seattle’s Eastside growth exploded thanks to the Lake Washington Floating Bridge, which opened in 1940.  But the area was also known as a fine area for enjoying life with a horse. According to one source, at one time there may have been approximately 3,500 horses in the Greater Bellevue area. In the early 1930s a portion of public lands between Bellevue and Kirkland was designated for the use of local horse riders  (and eventually became Bridle Trails State Park). The Lake Washington Saddle Club was founded in 1945.  North of downtown Bellevue the community of Diamond S was developed for families with horses. On 15 acres on  Clyde Hill A.Draper and Lida Coale raised show horses from 1950 to the early 1980s. A few months after Clyde Hill incorporated as a 4th class municipality in 1953, the Coales’s Tarry-Longer stable hosted a horse show to raise money for the new city’s empty coffers.  As the headline of an article about the Eastside in the Seattle Sunday Times in 1951 declared, “Days of Dobbin Are Not Done.”

Gerties around table at lunch in their clubroom (2000.015)

Certainly one of the most colorful—and long enduring—groups of Eastside horsewomen (as they were then known) were the Gallop’n Gerties.  An offshoot of the Lake Washington Saddle Club, the Gerties gleefully resisted formal organization over the years.  Without bylaws, officers or dues, one member said simply there was “no club anywhere more loose-jointed and such fun.”  Though many members lived in the Bridle Trails area, one came from Mercer Island and another rode north from Wilburton Hill.  For years a third member who lived on Clyde Hill taught local kids to ride. When one of her horses, Tony, died, he had been so beloved in the community that the Bellevue American newspaper gave him a two-column obituary.

The Gertie’s original drill team, complete with groups’ pennant at left, probably on 104th Ave NE in Bellevue (2000.015)

The group gathered every Thursday morning for a ride, followed by lunch hosted by one of the group.  Eventually they got a clubroom—the “Tack Room”-- in member Mel O’Farrell’s barn. There was always a Christmas party to which spouses were invited, and the group’s drill team participated in Eastside summer events.  They were part of Bellevue’s Seafair Parade in 1951, where the girls (as the news reporter called them) “exhibited fancy drills and wheeled their mounts along the parade route.” Members participated individually and as a group in the Saddle Club’s gymkhanas.

The three-day trail ride was a high spot of many summers.  Over the years the group rode up the Teanaway River near Cle Elum; in the Methow Valley; the Capitol Forest near Olympia; and along the Pacific Crest Trail from Deep Creek to White Pass.

Gerties on summer pack trip on Pacific Crest Trail, 1968 (2000.015)

The Gerties maintained a robust membership of about 25 women over several decades, The hostess roster for 1980 listed 22 different lunch hostesses over the year.  Inevitably though, the group’s scrapbook began to include obituaries along with the celebrations.  But as recently as 1998 there were still ten Gerties living in the Bridle Trails area, and four or five of them met on Thursdays, if no longer to ride still to enjoy each other’s company and recall their years in the saddle together.

Sources:

Seattle Times, Jan. 21, 1951, Aug. 12, 1951; Jan. 29, 1963

Kirkland Courier, Feb. 1, 1998

Gallop’n Gerties scrapbook (2000.015), EHC collection

Japanese Farmers Post WWII

BY Barb williams, EASTSIDE HERITAGE CENTER VOLUNTEER

After four difficult years at Pinedale, Tule Lake, and Minidoka incarceration camps some Japanese farmers began returning to their pre-WWII farms in Bellevue. Approximately 20 families of the original 70 chose to return.  Those who had leased their farms prior to the war often did not come back. Those having land ownership, often did. However, life was not easy and they had a difficult time recovering their land, jobs, lives, and a sense of Japanese community which had been so strong prior to the War. Their courage, skills as farmers, and contributions to their community have been recognized in multiple ways.  Bellevue is a member of the Sister Cities project, Yao Japan being Bellevue’s sister city.  

The Suguro family had farmed in Midlakes near Lake Bellevue. Takayoshi and Michi Suguro’s daughter, Sumie, remembers how difficult “it was to come back to a farm in shambles and to return to an unlivable house. The people who lived in our home even had chickens running through the house and our roof was leaking. The Takeshitas, our neighbors, were so kind in having us stay with them until we could clean our house.” Sumie, like other returning Japanese children, had to adjust to attending an almost all-white school after spending four years with only Japanese people. It was a lonely time for her being the only Japanese girl in the class. While going through high school she worked as a live-in nanny to help her family and graduated in 1947. She is proud to say that her father was the last Japanese immigrant (Issei) to farm in Bellevue. He retired in 1953, when the family sold their property to Safeway. Their neighbors, the Takeshita family, had bought their property in 1919 so were able to return to their home and farm; both suffered from neglect. Times had changed making it difficult for Japanese farmers to realize a profit. As land values went up they began to sell their lands to developers. In 1953, the Takeshita family sold their land to the Great Northern Railroad.

Ron Wurzer/Seattle Times: John Matsuoka stands amid his cornfield in Bellevue, where he has farmed for nearly 50 years. (8/20/1997)

Among those to return were John Matsuoka. However, his brother, Tom (Takeo) Matsuoka, a prominent leader in the pre-WWII Bellevue Japanese community, did not. Instead, he continued to farm in Montana where he had been sent during the war. John, who grew up farming in Kent had been sent to Minidoka. In the 1950s he came to Bellevue where he and his wife lived for over 60 years. At the age of 52, he went to work for the Bellevue Post Office from which he retired after 20 years of service. He also leased 3.5 acres of farmland from the Bellevue Parks and Community Services Department at 156th Avenue SE and SE 16th Street. He grew potatoes, brussels sprouts, lettuce and corn. He became famous for his sweet Silver Corn which he sold on Sundays. The Seattle Times and Journal American dubbed him the “Corn Man of Bellevue”. He loved his old tractor and farming. In 1997, at age 82, farming had become a hobby for John; one of the last of a generation of Japanese-American farmers in Bellevue. 

Asaichi Tsushima, a pre-WWII Bellevue Issei landowner and community leader, returned to Bellevue. In 1929, he had been the first teacher at the Japanese language school. In 1952, he wrote an extensive documentary, “Pre-WWII History of Japanese Pioneers in the Clearing and Development of Land in Bellevue”. Much of the information is written from memory because many of his notes were lost during incarceration. The document is a treasure; a fine contribution to the legacy of the Japanese pioneers in Bellevue.

Greg Gilbert/Seattle Times: Joan Seko, 80, recalls the tireless work of creating and maintaining her family’s traditional Japanese garden on Bellevue’s Phantom Lake (9/5/2017)

Reminders of the Japanese farmers and their talent was apparent in the beauty of Seko Garden. Joan Seko and her late husband (owners of the Bush Garden restaurant in Seattle) developed a traditional Japanese garden that sloped to the shores of Phantom Lake. By 2017 at age 80 Joan could no longer maintain the grounds. She was hoping to find a way to preserve the garden once she moved off the property.

Duke’s Bellevue Bar & Grill, Barrier Motors, and the Safeway Distribution Center are located on lands formerly owned and farmed by Japanese farmers. Alice Ito’s family was one of them. In 1999, she volunteered with the Eastside Japanese American History Project that designed a traveling exhibit of photographs and text to be sent to libraries, schools, shopping malls, and museums around Washington State. 

Teresa Tamura/Seattle Times: Alice Ito interviewed Japanese Americans, including her father who is pictured on the computer screen, as a part of an Eastside history project that spans 1898 through the 1950s (4/15/1999)

Rick Schweinhart/Journal: A display about the history of the Eastside Japanese Americans is open at Bellevue City Hall. The exhibit documents the thriving Japanese American community before World War II (4/21/1999)

Michal Friesen, third grade teacher at Woodridge Elementary in Bellevue, teaches her students about Japanese American history (4/2022). She and her fellow teachers notify families before they begin teaching the unit. They stick to the facts, use age-appropriate clips of interviews and picture books. She feels that “You cannot tell the history of Bellevue without talking about the Japanese immigrants and the community that helped form it.”

Resources

Eastside Heritage Center Archives: obituaries, newspaper articles, Sumie Akizuki, Rose Yabuki Matshushita

Publication, The Seattle Times, “A Hidden Past: An Exploration of Eastside History”. 12/1997 - 1/2000

Asaichi Tsushima, Pre-WWII History of Japanese Pioneers in the Clearing and Development of Land in Bellevue,  1992

Japanese Farmers in Bellevue (1898 - 1942)

BY Barb williams, EASTSIDE HERITAGE CENTER VOLUNTEER

Early Japanese pioneers in Bellevue often lived in abandoned Indian dwellings. They mostly worked on the railroads, in the sawmills and clearing lands for agriculture. They cleared Clyde Hill, Wilburton Hill, Hunts Point and Yarrow Point to name a few. Cutting the trees and dynamiting the huge stumps was a dangerous and a slow process. The area was covered with dense forests of old growth trees sometimes five feet in diameter. It could take a week to process one tree.

Two early Japanese pioneers to Bellevue were Mr. Jusaburo Fujii and Mr. Kiichi Setsuda who arrived in 1898. The latter worked as a houseboy at Mr. Hunt’s place on Hunt’s Point where he grew potatoes. The former worked at local sawmills and as a cook for Mr. Dagwood who owned an Alaskan cannery. When not working at the cannery, Mr. Fujii worked as the ‘field boss’ for the gardens where Mr. Dagwood grew strawberries. As ‘field boss’ Mr. Fujii hired Japanese workers. Thus began the colorful story of the strawberry. The success of this plant as a highly desirable and productive crop in Bellevue was largely due to the hard work, experiments and skilled agricultural practices of Japanese farmers. At first they leased land for the required minimum of five years; the average life of a strawberry field. With this relatively stable commitment, they began to bring their wives and other family members to the area from Japan. Having made enough money, some were able to buy lands from the railroads.

J98.10.01.a-d - Strawberry pickers on the Takeshita farm in Bellevue, 1933

In 1904, the Wilburton trestle was built by the Northern Pacific Railroad bringing transportation and land opportunities to the Bellevue Midlakes area. Several Issei (Japanese-born) families bought land to farm. They set up successful farms growing pole beans, peas, tomatoes, strawberries, cabbages, cucumbers, celery and lettuce. In 1919, with the help of a Japanese-American attorney, the Takeshita family bought 13 acres just east of the railroad tracks and north of Lake Bellevue. Several other families bought adjacent property which they turned into productive agricultural lands located primarily in the Midlakes area. Wilburton and downtown Bellevue became Japanese farmlands as well. Between 1905 to 1938, there were 32 Issei who owned land: some of whom were Takeo (Tom) Matsuoka, Asaichi Tsushima, Itaro Ito and Takayushi Suguro.

Strawberry production was very successful and the fruit so popular that in 1925 a group, including Japanese farmers, got together to initiate the first Bellevue Strawberry Festival, complete with a Queen. The highlight of the festival was the scrumptious strawberry shortcakes with sun-ripened red strawberries topped with thick cream from local dairies. The majority of the strawberries were grown and provided by Bellevue Japanese farmers. The annual festival continued until 1942.

1994BHS.024.001 - 1939 view of Japanese farms near Midlakes

Despite the enactment of the Washington State Alien Land Law (March 2, 1921) that denied Japanese the right to purchase land, Issei (born in Japan) who had already purchased land could retain it and Nissei (Japanese citizens born in the United States) could purchase land. Thus the Japanese community and farmers continued to grow and prosper. With the leadership of members of the Bellevue Japanese Community Association, The community Clubhouse (Kokaido) was built in 1930 at 101st Avenue NE and NE 11th Street. It provided a space for language classes, social gatherings, services and active Japanese sports.

By 1931, Japanese-American farmers on the Eastside were shipping produce throughout the northwest via the Northern Pacific Railroad. Peas sold for approximately one cent per pound and strawberries for about one dollar a crate. As produce continued to flow in and out of Bellevue, the Bellevue Growers Association (organized in 1930) recognized the need for a central distribution site. In 1933 they helped build a shipping/packing shed in Midlakes alongside the railroad tracks at 117th NE & NE 10th. Three full-time, year-round employees were hired: a business manager, bookkeeper and floor manager assisted by 20 seasonal workers. Tom Matsuoka, who was very active in the Bellevue Growers Association, became the business manager. His marriage to Kazue Tatsunosuke was the first Bellevue marriage of a Nisei; Kazue being born in the United States.

Prior to World War II, there were about 300 Japanese Americans living in Bellevue comprising 15% of the general population and 90% of the agricultural workforce. It was around this time (December 7, 1941) that Tom Matsuoka remembers the sunny afternoon when he was preparing plants for the winter. Suddenly his daughter, Rae and friends, came running saying, “ There’s a war started. ---- The Japanese planes have bombed Pearl Harbor!” Tom was thoughtfully silent. Then he went back to tending his plants. Shortly thereafter several prominent Japanese community leaders, including Tom, were taken away to incarceration camps; Tom to Montana. Later he joined his family at Tule Lake, California.

J 89.02.02 - Tom Matsuoka and his sons, Ty and Tats, outside of the Bellevue Vegetable Growers Association shed. 1933

On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 ordering all people of Japanese decent to incarceration camps. In May 1942, all Japanese people (Issei and Nisei) in Bellevue were taken from their homes and sent to the Pinedale Assembly site near Fresno, California. The fields with strawberries ready to be harvested were empty of Japanese pickers and the Strawberry Festival was cancelled.

Sumie Akizuki, Nisei daughter of Issei Bellevue residents Takayoshi and Michi Suguro, remembers those tough times as she writes:

“We took the train at a station in Kirkland, and what an irony it was that we would go right pass our farm which was located right next to the railroad tracks. We could see the neat rows of the strawberry fields and our house in the distance. As the train went by, my parents saw their farm for the last time, focusing their eyes on the farm until it disappeared into the horizon. I’m sure it was heartbreaking to lose all they had worked so hard for. Going to camp was the first time I had been on a train. When I was growing up, I wished that someday, I could ride a train on the Wilburton Railroad Trestle. I would look up in awe at the trestle, which impressed me so much during my childhood. ——-. It is an irony that my dream came true when I rode on the trestle, on a coal driven locomotive, that took me to the Pinedale, California assembly center. What seemed like an adventure was not at all like I thought it would be, since it was a time of sadness and uncertainly.”

— Sumie Akizuki

Fifty years later, she rode the dinner train across the trestle with family and friends.

In 1993 four Japanese cherry trees were planted in the Bellevue Downtown park to honor the Japanese immigrants and their contributions to the growth of Bellevue. A plaque reads: “To honor the Bellevue citizens of Japanese ancestry who had so enriched our community”.

Sources:

Eastside Heritage Center archives

Sumie Akizuki letter

Journal American newspaper article, “The Clearing of Bellevue”, May 10, 1992.

Asaichi Tsushima, document “Pre-WWII History of Japanese Pioneers in the Clearing and Development of Land in Bellevue, 1952,

Rose Yabuki Matshushita, 1997 - Excerpt from presentation on Executive Order 9066 at Marymoor Museum

North American Post, article “ part 3 of an 8-part series: Bellevue’s Nikkei Roots”. 12/12/1997.

Publication of the Seattle Times: A Hidden Past. c. 2000

photo: 1936 showing 7 Japanese farms along 117th NE & NE 11th, photo courtesy of Mitsuko (Takeshita) Hashiguchi

Book: Bellevue Timeline by Alan J. Stein & The HistoryLink Staff, c.2004