Mercer Island memories

Shaped like a footprint without toes, Mercer Island stretches about six miles long in the southern half of Lake Washington, just four miles across at its widest point.

A drive around this once-isolated tree-covered hump reveals little of the history that transformed it into today's upscale, tightly knit community.

But for those islanders who look hard enough or reach back far enough to their own roots, the island is still rich with clues and memories that link today's residents to the island's history.

The Indians

In the distant past, the Snoqualmie Tribe had two villages on the west shore of Mercer Island, south of today's Interstate 90, but nothing is left of those villages.

What is known is that the Snoqualmies frequented the island to fish and gather berries and to meet for potlatches with the Duwamish and Suquamish tribes.

Charles Hinzman, the wife of Mary Anne Hinzman, Snoqualmie tribal secretary, remembers that when he was growing up on the island in the 1930s he could walk along the shore near the former village sites and pick up coffee cans full of arrowheads and even stone hatchet heads.

"There were only a little over a thousand people living there then, scattered all over the island," he said.

The white pioneers

Mercer Island was named after one of the Mercer brothers - Thomas, Asa or Aaron - who came to Seattle in the 1850s and 1860s, but historians don't agree on which one. None of the brothers ever lived on the island.

It is known that Judge Thomas Mercer, the oldest of the three brothers, was friendly with local Native Americans and often had an Indian row him from Seattle to the island in the morning and return in the evening to row him back. Mercer is said to have enjoyed picking berries and walking along the shoreline.

The first federal government survey, made in 1860, named the island Mercer's Island, a year before Asa Mercer arrived in Seattle.

Aaron Mercer, who came to Seattle with Thomas, filed a claim on Mercer Slough in Bellevue, which today bears his name. Asa, the youngest of the trio, is best known for traveling back to the East Coast and bringing two groups of "Mercer Girls" to Seattle, in 1864 and 1866, to marry the large number of single men.

The first permanent settlers, Charles and Agnes Olds, made the island home in 1885. Within five years there were 15 families on the island.

David Garrison said one story sticks in his mind about his great-grandfather, Charles Olds, who apparently got along with Native Americans who visited the island after whites settled there.

"They often would leave fish at his doorstep, without any great ceremony," he said.

It was C.C. Calkins who, after arriving in Seattle in 1887, put Mercer Island on the map. After buying a chunk of land on the west side of the island he built his fabulous Calkins Hotel and platted what he hoped would become a town called East Seattle - a name for that neighborhood that remains today.

He then built an ostentatious brick home on Calkins Point, now the site of Luther Burbank Park. But Calkins went broke, and family misfortunes plagued him until he left the area and never returned.

Another colorful pioneer was Alla Olds Luckenbill Garrison, who arrived with her parents in 1885 and spent her life on the site of the former 160-acre Olds family farm until her death in 1955.

Charles Olds felt that higher education was "wasted" on women, but Alla Garrison challenged her father and went to the Territorial University in Seattle. She supported herself by working as a domestic in private homes.

In retaliation, her father sold her horse. When she returned to the island to teach at the East Seattle School in the late 1890s she had to walk the 10-mile round trip from Appleton (the Olds Farm) to the school every day.

Delores Echinger, who has lived on the island since the 1930s, knew Alla Garrison as a "cantankerous benevolent," recalling that the hardy pioneer would often row from the Olds farm to the south end of the island to bring food to a needy family.

During World War II, Alla Garrison allowed soldiers from two anti-aircraft-gun installations on the island to come to the farm to ride her horses.

A member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, she was active in island affairs until her death.

The bridges

For almost four decades, island residents relied on small ferries to travel to and from the mainland. Finally, in 1923, the first East Channel Bridge was opened, connecting the island from Barnabie Point to Enatai in Bellevue. The 1,200-foot-long bridge allowed the 2,500 island residents to drive to Seattle via Renton.

By the 1930s, the old wooden structure was so rickety that children on school buses heading to and from the island to Bellevue got out and walked across the span, and another bus picked them up on the other side. Under President Franklin Roosevelt's Work Projects Administration (WPA), a new bridge was built.

The Lake Washington Floating Bridge, linking the island and the entire Eastside with Seattle, was opened in July 1940 and later renamed the Lacey V. Murrow Bridge in honor of the state highway director who was active in its realization.

Two municipalities

Newcomers to the area don't realize that about 30 years ago there were two local governments on Mercer Island, the result of a decades-long head-to-head battle over what sort of local government was to be established.

An election in 1945 to incorporate the island divided residents and the proposal was defeated. Over the next 25 years it was a free-for-all:

November 1953: Voters turned down incorporation or annexation to Seattle.

July 1960: Voters in the area generally south of what is now the central business district approved incorporation of the city of Mercer Island.

August 1960: Voters in the area along what is now I-90 voted to incorporate as the town of Mercer Island. Over the next decade there was much debate over merging the two entities.

May 1970: Voters throughout the island approved a merger of the two municipalities as the city of Mercer Island.

Schools

Shortly after settling on the island, Charles Olds saw the need for a school and with George Miller, who lived at Enatai across the East Channel, drew up a plan.

The island's first school was a former one-room cabin in the area called Briarwood, near what was to become the island end of the East Channel Bridge.

Only the Olds children and other island students would attend school at Briarwood for four months. Then classes were held for Miller's children and others at Enatai for four months.

Olds and Miller hired Henry Kelsey, recently arrived from New York, as the teacher, and he moved back and forth from the mainland to the island for his teaching assignments.

Next came the East Seattle and Allview Schools in 1889, followed by McGilvra and Lakeview.

Until 1955, when Mercer Island High School opened, older students had a choice of going to Bellevue or Franklin high schools. The first graduating class was in 1958.

Sources for this article include "Mercer Island Heritage" by Judy Gellatly, published by the Mercer Island Historical Society.