Bellevue: The Beautiful View!

It's hard to believe that Bellevue is a place where residents once focused on fish — instead of microchips. The city's founders took one look at the Cascade Mountains to the East and Lake Washington to the West and gave it a French name for beautiful view.

Once upon a time, Bellevue Real Estate was focused upon a bedroom community that depended on jobs in Seattle for its residents. Lethargic Bellevue Realtors spent their time watching whaling ships pass by. The property that is fertile ground for entrepreneurial enterprises today was once fertile ground for strawberries and other soft, fleshy fruit.

Then — in 1940 — there was a highway bridge built across Lake Washington.

A trip that once required a ferry ride from Seattle to Kirkland was suddenly possible by car. Bellevue became a destination as its southern border was now in reach of Seattle residents. Just a decade later, Bellevue Square signaled a new era of suburban shopping that would draw thousands across the water.

Today, Bellevue is a high tech commercial center of more than 100,000 residents who rarely make the trip back to Seattle. It was the original Washington home of Microsoft and numerous spin-off companies that live in today's "Silicon Forest". Bellevue Square has multiplied across the city's downtown area, as have dozens of financial centers and five-star hotels.

But Bellevue, remains an attractive residential area from its Lake Washington shores to the international shops at Crossroads Shopping Center and the inviting Factoria Mall. Its schools compete with the best in the country. Newport High School itself was recently ranked one of the 50 best high schools in the nation by Newsweek magazine.

From almost anywhere in Bellevue, the view remains beautiful.