2021 Wilburton community sign in Bellevue Washington

Wilburton is a neighborhood in

Bellevue, Washington 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 a s ...

, United States. It is situated to the east of

downtown Bellevue Downtown Bellevue is the central business district of Bellevue, Washington, United States. It is bounded by I-405 to the east, NE 12th Street to the north, 100th Ave NE to the west, and Main Street to the south, and covers an area of around . I ...

, and to the west of the

Crossroads Crossroads, crossroad, cross road or similar may refer to: * Crossroads (junction), where four roads meet Film and television Films * ''Crossroads'' (1928 film), a 1928 Japanese film by Teinosuke Kinugasa * ''Cross Roads'' (film), a 1930 Brit ...

and Lake Hills neighborhoods. Wilburton started out as an old

logging camp A logging camp (or lumber camp) is a transitory work site used in the logging industry. Before the second half of the 20th century, these camps were the primary place where lumberjacks would live and work to fell trees in a particular area. Many ...

, and was annexed by Bellevue in 1967. Currently, 3,790 people live in Wilburton.

Background

Wilburton, Bellevue, WA, USA - panoramio (1)

Wilburton was logged beginning in the 1890s by a man named William Powell. The first sawmill on the site was built in 1903 by George England and Manley Wilbur, from where Wilburton gets its name. In 1904, the town of Wilburton was platted and in 1905, the Hewitt-Lea Lumber Company took over the logging and milling operations. It built a spur line that followed Kelsey Creek up to the Lake Hills area and brought in the town's first locomotive in 1907. The Hewitt-Lea Lumber Company logged the region between Lake Hills and the northern end of

Cougar Mountain Cougar Mountain is a peak in the Issaquah Alps in King County, Washington. It is part of the highlands in the Eastside suburbs of Seattle, and at it is the lowest and westernmost of the Alps. About two-thirds of Cougar Mountain has experienced ...

. The sawmill buildings were located underneath the current 405 overpass near the base of the

Wilburton Trestle The Wilburton Trestle is a historic wooden railway trestle in Bellevue, Washington. Measuring high and long, it is the longest wooden trestle in the Pacific Northwest. The trestle carried a single track of a former Northern Pacific branch line ...

. Its operations were supported by a town of more than 350 people. The mill closed in 1919 when harvestable timber ran out. By the end of the 1920s, the mill and all logging-related structures were gone, but the town remained. Most of the houses were demolished by the 1960s and the properties have been re-developed into condominiums, apartments, and office parks. Wilburton contains the

International School An international school is an institution that promotes education in an international environment or framework. Although there is no uniform definition or criteria, international schools are usually characterized by a multinational student body a ...

, Wilburton Hill Park,

Bellevue Botanical Garden Bellevue Botanical Garden is a botanical garden east of downtown Bellevue, Washington on Main Street. Established in 1992, many different organizations work to maintain the garden to keep it free of charge. What began as a 7-acre gift to the city in ...

and the 160-acre Kelsey Creek Park.

References

External links

* {{coord, 47, 36, 11, N, 122, 10, 51, W, type:city_region:US-WA_source:GNIS-enwiki, display=title Neighborhoods in Bellevue, Washington