Bellevue Washington History & Facts

Bellevue is a city in the Eastside region of King County, Washington, United States, located across Lake Washington from Seattle. It is the third-largest city in the Seattle metropolitan area and has variously been characterized as an edge city, a suburb, boomburb, or satellite city. Its population was 122,363 at the 2010 census and 151,854 in the 2020 census. The city's name is derived from the French term belle vue ("beautiful view").

Bellevue is home to some of the world's largest technology companies. Prior to 2008, its downtown area underwent rapid change with many high-rise projects being constructed, and was relatively unaffected by the economic downturn. Downtown Bellevue is currently the second-largest city center in Washington state, with 1,300 businesses, 45,000 employees, and 10,200 residents. In a 2018 estimate, the city's median household income was among the top five cities in the state of Washington. In 2008, Bellevue was number one in CNNMoney's list of the best places to live and launch a business, and in 2010 was again ranked as the fourth-best place to live in America. In 2014, Bellevue was ranked as the second-best place to live by USA Today.

More than 145 companies have been located in Bellevue; companies currently headquartered there include PACCAR Inc, T-Mobile, and Valve. The technology company Amazon was founded in Bellevue by Jeff Bezos.

The Duwamish, whose main settlements were located in present-day Renton and Seattle, maintained a small outpost settlement called Satskal (SAH-tsah-kahl) along the Mercer Slough, south of present-day downtown Bellevue. It was from this village that an attack on the settlers of Elliott Bay was staged. The Duwamish also had a village near Factoria called 'pah-pah-DEEL'.

Bellevue was first settled by European Americans in 1869 by William Meydenbauer and Aaron Mercer, who claimed homestead tracts several miles apart. Both moved away within a few years, and permanent residents did not arrive until 1879. By 1882, a community, consisting mostly of logging homesteaders, had established itself. Once the land had been logged, it was gradually cleared, largely by Japanese immigrant labor in the early 20th century, to support small-scale farming on leased land plots.

By the early part of the 20th century, Bellevue had acquired a reputation as a weekend getaway destination for Seattle residents, who would arrive by ferry at Meydenbauer Bay and spend the day at nearby Wildwood Park. After the ferry landing was moved to Medina, however, tourism to Bellevue waned. To counter this decline, the Bellevue Strawberry Festival was conceived of in 1925, and by the 1930s it had grown to attract as many as 15,000 visitors. At the time, Bellevue was still a small town with around 2,000 residents.

Prior to the opening of the Lake Washington Floating Bridge in 1940, Bellevue was mostly rural farmland area with little development. Although it was small, developers were pushing to change that; in the 1920s, James S. Ditty predicted that it would become a city with a population of 200,000. He envisioned plans that included the bridging of Lake Washington and an area filled with golf courses and airports. His map with these visions was published in 1928. Once the Murrow Memorial Bridge opened, access from Seattle improved, and the area began to evolve into a bedroom community.

In 1942, the Bellevue Strawberry Festival was cancelled. The primary reason was that some 90 percent of the agricultural workforce in the area was of Japanese ancestry, and all of these farmers and their families had been forcibly interned in camps following the start of World War II. The fair would not be revived for another 45 years. Following the expulsion of the ethnic Japanese farming community, a large quantity of farmland became available for development. This made way for the initial development of the Bellevue downtown area.

Famous Peoples From Bellevue Washington

Larry Sanger

Lawrence Mark Sanger is an American Internet project developer and philosopher who co-founded the online encyclopedia Wikipedia along with Jimmy Wales. Sanger coined the name and wrote much of Wikipedia's original governing policy. Sanger has worked on other online projects, including Nupedia, Encyclopedia of Earth, Citizendium, WatchKnowLearn, Reading Bear, Infobitt and Everipedia. He has also advised blockchain company Phunware and the nonprofit online American political encyclopedia Ballotpedia.

While studying at college, Sanger developed an interest in using the Internet for educational purposes and joined the online encyclopedia Nupedia as editor-in-chief in 2000. Disappointed with the slow progress of Nupedia, Sanger proposed using a wiki to solicit and receive articles to put through Nupedia's peer-review process; this change led to the development and launch of Wikipedia in 2001. Sanger served as Wikipedia's community leader in Wikipedia's early stages but became increasingly disillusioned with the project and left it in 2002. Sanger's status as a co-founder of Wikipedia has been questioned by fellow co-founder Jimmy Wales but is generally accepted.

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