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Beaver Lake
Reprinted with permission from the Sammamish Review. Like so many other places on the Plateau, Beaver Lake got its start from logging. Early in the 20th century the Eastside lumber magnate Bratnober Lumber Company owned the land on the west end of the lake, while Weyerhaeuser Company owned the land around the east and south end. Between 1910 and 1920 both companies began actively logging around the lake. Bratnober’s operation shipped its logs to the mill in Monohon (near today’s East Lake Sammamish Blvd and SE 33rd Street); Weyerhaeuser’s logs went to the Snoqualmie Mill. There was a clever setup for loading the large logs onto the railroad cars. Heavy lifting cranes did not yet exist and the logs were too heavy to be lifted by hand. The logs were sorted in the ‘millpond’ on the far eastern side of the lake, then inventoried and recorded in a nearby ‘tally shack’ owned by Weyerhaeuser. The logs were next floated to a nearby spot, still on the far eastern side of the lake, where a spur of the railroad tracks went right into the lake. The logs were tied to the railroad car parked underwater on the tracks, then shipped to the mills. Bratnober cleared the west side of the lake before Weyerhaeuser cleared the east side. Thus the first scattered development on the lake was on the west side, probably around 1920. The first permanent residents on the lake were Jake and Nora Lott, who came from Vancouver, BC. The Lotts had a cabin west of present-day West Beaver Lake Drive, and by 1922 were renting boats to fishermen. They also operated a small store and dance hall. By the mid-1920s the Beaver Lake Amusement Park owned land on the southwest shore of the lake, but it’s unknown if there was an amusement park actually built there. If there was, it was gone by the early 1930s. In the 1930s more summerhouses began springing up along the west side of the lake, including a community known as “the Colony”, located near the south shore. In 1932 Gus and Lulu Bartels bought a large piece of waterfront land on the southwest shore and established the Four Seasons Resort. Jake Lott built or helped build 13 cabins for the resort (including a new cabin for himself in 1937 after his first cabin burned). Many of the cabins were nicely decorated with rented Frederick and Nelson furniture. Around 1936 the Four Seasons Lodge was built on the lake, with upstairs dormitories for men and women accessed by separate stairways from the dining room below, and a kitchen able to serve 150 people. 1939 was a pivotal year for Beaver Lake. Bratnober completed his logging operations on the west side of the lake by the late 1930s, and closed his Monohon mill in September 1939. Meanwhile, Weyerhauser likewise completed its logging operations on the east side of the lake about this time and in April 1939 platted its Beaver Lake property on the east shore of the lake for residential and recreational use. Beaver Lake was now open for use and development, and in the June 1939 the Red Cross Aquatic and Life Saving School held its first of many training schools at the Four Seasons Lodge. In the 1940s and 1950s Bartel’s Resort was the place to be on weekends and in the summer. “It was great,” remarked Connie Del Missier of Mercer Island, who attended many a dance and summer event at Bartel’s resort during this time. “Everybody who went to high school in Seattle in the ‘40s and early ‘50s went to dances at Beaver Lake.” “And in those days it was really going out in the country,” she added. “We called one road ‘whoopee road’ because it was like riding a rollercoaster.” ‘Whoopee Road’ was 228th Avenue SE, between SE 24th and today’s Issaquah-Pine Lake Road. In 1955, Dick Anderson bought the resort and renamed it Andy’s Beaver Lake Resort. One of the first events under the new stewardship, according to a contemporary article in a December 1955 issue of the Issaquah Press, was an invitation to come to a meeting at Andy’s Beaver Lake Resort on December 18 to organize the Beaver Lake Community Club. The Beaver Lake Community Club would go on to make its own mark on and around Beaver Lake. Andy’s closed the dance hall, but maintained the cabins and the lodge. In 1960 Anderson sold the resort to the Catholic Archdiocese of Seattle for use by the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO). The CYO established a youth camp there called Camp Cabrini. Camp Cabrini operated until 1985, when King County purchased the site for a park, now known as Beaver Lake Park. But what may have been lost once the resorts were gone was made up by the work of the Beaver Lake Community Club. Ruth Shearer, now of Lacey, first moved to Beaver Lake in 1965 and fondly spoke of some of the activities the club put on. “The Beaver Lake Regatta (held every summer in July or August) was a big community event,” she said. “In the mornings there would be boat races around the southern end of the lake. There were canoe races, sailboat races, but no motorboats. There was also a raft race, but this was more for artistry. Swimming races were in the afternoon.” The Beaver Lake Community Club was also instrumental in bringing good public roads to Beaver Lake. Although a version of SE 24th from Pine Lake to the west end of Beaver Lake had been built by the early 1920s, for many years only a few scattered roads served the east side of the lake and those roads were bad. In the 1960s, Beaver Lake teamed up with the Issaquah School District and had King County build and improve the roads on the east side. By 1970 Beaver Lake also had its own water district and fire station. Limited residential development began around Beaver Lake about 1960, though Ruth Shearer recalled Beaver Lake in 1965 with still more summer cabins than permanent homes. Development increased in the 1970s and the rural resort of Beaver Lake soon disappeared into another interesting chapter of Sammamish history. ---Phil Dougherty * NOTE: The Sammamish Review owns the copyright to this article. If you ever wish to reprint this article, you must first obtain the permission of the Sammamish Review and acknowledge in the reprint that it’s reprinted with the permission of the Review. Contact the Review editor for more details. |
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