JOINING GOD’S SHALOM
IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD
Dwight and his family live in the Lake Hills neighborhood of Bellevue, Washington, on Seattle’s Eastside. Nestled between Lake Washington to the west and Lake Sammamish to the east, the neighborhood opens toward the Olympic Mountains, the Cascades, and, on clear days, the magnificent silhouettes of Mount Rainier and Mount Baker. It doesn’t take long to appreciate why this place came to be called Bellevue—”beautiful view.”
Yet the beauty of a place is more than its landscape. It is also the stories held within its soil.
People have lived in this region for at least 10,000 years. Long before European colonization, these lands were home to Coast Salish peoples, including the Sammamish. More recently, Dwight learned that the Yakama also maintained a winter encampment near Larsen Lake—a place less than a mile from his home, just beyond Kelsey Creek and the neighborhood blueberry fields.
European explorers arrived in the late eighteenth century, followed by settlers who displaced Indigenous peoples and reshaped the land. Bellevue itself would not be incorporated until 1953, but the histories that formed this place reach much further back—and continue to shape its present. One story Dwight returns to often is that of the Japanese American farming families who cultivated the land surrounding Larsen and Phantom Lakes during the early twentieth century. Their strawberry fields became so beloved that they inspired Lake Hills’ annual Strawberry Festival, first celebrated in 1925.
That joyful tradition came to an abrupt end in 1942 when Executive Order 9066 led to the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans throughout the West Coast. Fifty-five Japanese American families who farmed nearly 500 acres in what is now Lake Hills were uprooted from their homes and imprisoned at what is today the Washington State Fairgrounds in Puyallup before being sent to more permanent incarceration camps. The festival disappeared because the farmers disappeared.
When the Strawberry Festival was revived decades later, it became more than a neighborhood celebration. It also became an act of remembrance—a quiet acknowledgment that faithful belonging requires telling the whole story of a place, including its wounds.
Lake Hills itself was envisioned in the 1950s as one of the Pacific Northwest’s first master-planned communities, designed around neighborhoods, schools, parks, places of worship, and local commerce. Although much has changed, traces of its mid-century character remain for those willing to slow down and notice.
Dwight believes every place has something to teach us. Neighborhoods are not simply where we happen to live; they become our teachers. They invite us to pay attention—to the beauty that inspires gratitude, the histories that call for truth-telling, the relationships that nurture belonging, and the possibilities that awaken hope. To know a place is to discover that it has been shaping us all along.
Today’s Mid-century Homes of Lake Hills
Here are just a few other links to read more about our neighborhood.
- Lake Hills Demographics
- US Census Data (Note: the Census Bureau does not organize data on the Neighborhood level so you’ll have to approximate its “tracts” for your neighborhood or parish)
- Area Vibes, “Livability Score“
- Seattle Magazine, “Best Pocket Neighborhoods“
- Next Door
- East Bellevue Community Council, “We are Lake Hills“
Peace, dwight
Lake Hills