Our History

The Everest Neighborhood has officially been a part of the City of Kirkland since being annexed from King County in 1949 (see map-Item 1), and has had a colorful and varied history. The core single-family homes clustered around Everest Park are evidence of an evolution to a stable single-family zoned area. Everest Park has existed for close to 65 years, but in that time, it has undergone several changes, and continues to evolve today.

Before the neighborhood became part of the City of Kirkland, it served as the rail gateway to Kirkland. In the early part of the 20th century, goods and people primarily traveled over long distances either by ferry across the lake or by rail on the Northern Pacific line, along what is now the Cross Kirkland Corridor [CKC]. Kirkland’s rail station was in the Everest Neighborhood, on Railroad Avenue, about ¼ mile north of where you are standing. See the old picture (~1925) of the station, road underpass, and steam engine (Item 8). This station pictured about 1940 (Item 9), was torn down in the late 1960s and was replaced by a metal building that stood into the mid-1970s. The foundation for this building can be seen between the Cross Kirkland Corridor and Railroad Avenue, and is the platform for The Rotary Club of Kirkland’s Rotary Central Station.

Everest Park and Neighborhood are named after Harold P. Everest [1893-1967], Charter Member in 1937 of the Rotary Club of Kirkland, former owner and publisher of the East Side Journal, and civic leader of Kirkland. He was also a Chairman of the Journalism Department at the University of Washington and lived with his wife in an apartment up over the commercial buildings on the west side of Lake Street, north of the Anthony’s Homeport building.

One example of the changes in the neighborhood that occurred when Kirkland annexed this area was the change in street numbers and addresses. 8th  St S. used to be 110th Ave NE [341 8th St S. was 7347 110thAve NE]; 5th Ave S used to be NE 75th St; earlier it was Alexander Ave, after the original name of the plat, Alexander Acres. This type of street numbering system persists south of Everest in Houghton, and west of I-405, on Rose Hill.

Vestiges of an older railroad right-of-way can be seen in the embankment in the woods directly to the east of where you are standing. This was the railroad built to serve Peter Kirk’s steel mill in the late 1880s. The embankment connects to the north with what is now Slater St. Slater winds through Kirkland, unlike other north-south and east-west streets precisely because it was once a railbed. The steel mill was located just east of where Costco is now, north of NE 85th. The berm was built by hand labor to allow the planned tracks to cross the wet areas in the woods. If you want to see the rail bed berm, cross the creek on the south bridge and follow the trail that angles slightly to the right once you have crossed the creek. 

Alternatively, go to the south end of 8th St S. and turn left up 9th Ave S.to the trailhead at the end of the street, on the left. You will intersect the rail berm about 200 yards in, and can follow it to the beginning of Slater St S, which also follows the route taken by Peter Kirk’s railroad. While the rail bed was constructed in the late 1880s, actual rails from the north to serve Kirkland and the steel mill extended only to a bit south of Kirkland Ave on Slater St S.

In the 1940s, Everest Park was the site of a housing project, called ‘Project A’, built to house workers at the Lake Washington Shipyards, where Carillon Point is today.  [See adjacent map, Item 6] Following World War II, workers left the area as shipyard work disappeared; the housing project was torn down following the war when the residents left. It is believed that a few of the structures were moved to various nearby locations as single-family dwellings. Until the 1990s redevelopment of the park, remnants of sidewalks from the wartime housing could be seen in areas of the park. Pieces of foundation can still be seen in various areas of the park, including near the Kirkland Rotary Picnic Pavilion.

During the war, a warehouse complex was built adjacent to the railroad tracks, between 6th St S and the tracks, for the US Navy and the shipyard. These buildings after the war became headquarters for a number of companies, primarily Seattle Door Company. Into the 1970s, Seattle Door was Kirkland’s largest employer, with several hundred workers at the site. Seattle Door was sold and door manufacturing continued under other names into the 1990s. At one time, there was a large sawdust pneumatic conveying system at the site, and when manufacturing was done at night, the system was somewhat noisy. In 2006, the old buildings were torn down and the site redeveloped into the Google office complex, completed in late 2008.

For the first 30-40 years of the past century, Kirkland supplied fresh produce, dairy products, and eggs to Seattle. Kirkland’s Orthopedic Hospital Guild paid their dues at least partly in eggs. (The aerial photo taken in 1932 [Item 2] shows the largely rural nature of the neighborhood at that time.) The cul-de-sac at 8th Ave S. and the area with houses on the north side of 9th  Ave S. was part of an orchard (cherries, pears, maybe apples) attached to 800 9th Ave S. until the late 1970s. Most of the cul-de-sac at 6th Pl S. was a corral attached to the house now remodeled and located at 904 6th Pl S. but originally facing 8th St. S. Well into the 1980s this corral usually held two young steers being raised for meat. (Once in the 1970s, at least one of the steers escaped as it was being transferred from a truck to the corral and ran off down 8th St S.). There was a large chicken house behind 341 8th St S into the 1950s. 341 used to sit about 40 feet west and south from its present location. The house was moved and expanded when the original property was subdivided.  (The original house at 615 8th St S, (now part of the house across the street from this kiosk) had a corral [into the 1980s] that extended to the south where 619 8th St S is now. 

In the 1960s and again in the mid-1970s, attempts were made to expand industrial activity and then apartment buildings respectively into the area around the park. Only intense efforts by residents preserved this area’s single-family dwelling character.

While the Everest area was not ‘officially’ part of Kirkland until 1949, certainly the early residents looked to Kirkland as the nearest place to buy supplies and to go to for entertainment. [Kirkland was the largest community on the east side for many years, probably into the 1960s. Kirkland was started as a steel town by Peter Kirk in the 1880s and incorporated in 1905. Bellevue was not incorporated until 1953.] The owner and manager of the Gateway Theater in downtown Kirkland, Mel Sohns, lived at 341 8th St S.for a number of years. The Gateway Theater building still stands, on the north side of Central Way, just west of the intersection with Lake St.