Redmond is part of the greater Seattle metropolitan area and is located 11 air miles east-northeast of downtown Seattle. Prior to the arrival of white settlers in the nineteenth century, areas in what is now the southeastern part of the city served for thousands of years as the episodic home of Native tribes. Redmond was a small logging and farming village in its early years, but by the final years of the twentieth century it had developed into a pleasant Seattle suburb. The first quarter of the twenty-first century was transformative for the city, changing it in a generation from a predominantly white, quiet suburban community into a multi-cultural urban center with myriad modern buildings, numerous lifestyle opportunities, and a light-rail system that will run to Seattle when completed.
Village above Lake Sammamish
From time to time, Native Americans inhabited the locale north of Lake Sammamish in the millennia before non-Native settlers arrived in the nineteenth century. In the 1960s, evidence of Native camps was documented by archaeologists along the Sammamish River in Marymoor Park in southeastern Redmond. Some smaller camps were found to date back possibly as far as 4000 B.C., and there was evidence of a larger settlement at the location around 1000 B.C. In 2015, archaeologists working near Redmond Town Center (just north of Marymoor Park) announced they had unearthed evidence of Native tools such as stone scrapers and spear points that were at least 10,000 years old. Using a chemical analysis on one of the tools, the scientists were able to determine the types of food the Natives ate, which included bison, bear, and salmon.
By the time the first white settlers began arriving in the early 1870s there were only a few small Native camps left, consisting of members of the Sammamish band of the Duwamish Tribe. This band also was closely allied with its neighbors to the immediate southeast along Lake Sammamish, the Snoqualmie Tribe. However, no link has been established between the Sammamish natives and the earlier prehistoric dwellers, and the Native presence faded away as the village of Redmond developed.
In the spring of 1871, Luke McRedmond (1818-1898) and his wife Kate (1833-1895), both born in Ireland, settled on 80 acres of land that today is part of Redmond Town Center. In June 1871, New Brunswick-born Warren Perrigo (1836-1914) arrived with his wife Laura (1837-1887) and bought 80 acres near the present-day Bear Creek Village (shopping center), which is located along Redmond Way southeast of 170th Ave NE. The Perrigos built an inn on their property named Melrose House, which became a favored stop for other settlers and for travelers passing through the region.
A village slowly developed on the site east of the Sammamish River above the northern shore of Lake Sammamish, and by 1880 there were roughly 50 families living in the community. First called Salmonberg because of the abundance of chum salmon in the river and streams nearby, the community soon became known as Melrose in recognition of the popular inn. The U.S. Postal Service opened a post office, aptly named Melrose, on June 28, 1881, and in December 1882, Luke McRedmond was appointed postmaster. He persuaded the post office to rename the new station Redmond effective March 19, 1883. This led to dissension between the McRedmond and Perrigo families, but the name stuck. On May 11, 1891, Luke and Kate McRedmond filed the first town plat, which encompassed a tiny space of less than 10 blocks in today's historic downtown. The little village slowly grew, and by 1900 its population was 271.
A Town Is Born
Loggers had been coming to Redmond since the 1880s to harvest the abundant timber throughout the region, and activity increased after the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern Railway reached the village in 1889. By the early twentieth century, large lumber and shingle mills were springing up along the northeastern shore of Lake Sammamish. One of the biggest was the Campbell Mill, a lumber mill opened in 1905 in the company town of Campton just southeast of Redmond. The mill itself was built over pilings on Lake Sammamish's northeastern corner, and in 2025 these pilings were still visible in the water adjacent to East Lake Sammamish Parkway and 187th Street NE. The company built 16 miles of track into the woods, and it provided employee bunkhouses built on rail car frames that could be hauled into the woods when needed to keep production rolling. The mill burned in 1924 and was not rebuilt.
By the early 1910s, Redmond was eagerly awaiting the arrival of its 300th resident so it would meet the legal population limit required to incorporate in Washington. It came on November 24, 1912, with the birth of Ernest Adams III (1912-1992). Area residents quickly filed a petition with the Board of County Commissioners asking that it call an election so residents could vote on incorporation, and it was held less than three weeks later. The measure passed 94 to 9, and Redmond incorporated as a town of the 4th class on December 31, 1912. Fred Reil was the town's first mayor, but another mayor elected later in the decade left a bigger mark on Redmond's history: William "Bill" Brown (1878-1952).
Bill Brown's beginnings in Redmond date to 1887, when he arrived as a boy. He operated the B&B Logging Company with his brother Alfred for years, and by 1910 he was operating a saloon in a two-story frame building on the southeast corner of Cleveland Street and Leary Way. In 1913 he built a two-story brick building in the same location, which housed the saloon until state prohibition took effect in 1916. Among other uses, the building later served as a hardware store, dance hall, town council meeting place, and pizza parlor, and it's closely intertwined with the city's history. Since 2007 the eponymous Bill Brown building has housed the Matador, an upscale Mexican restaurant and bar. Brown himself served as Redmond's mayor for 30 years, from 1919 until 1949.
Redmond reported a population of 438 in its first U.S. Census in 1920. By then, it was transitioning from a village into a town. During the preceding decade its wooden sidewalks had been replaced with cement walks, and the pace of road construction had accelerated; during the 1920s, more of these roads were paved. More buildings went up downtown during the decade. And in 1920, small local schools that had previously served the community, such as Union Hill, Happy Valley, and Inglewood (located in present-day Sammamish), consolidated into the Redmond School District. This and other factors led to the construction of a new two-story, red-brick school on NE 80th Street east of 166th Avenue NE in 1922. The school, originally with 12 rooms (later expanded) and serving all grades, also had a gymnasium and an auditorium, and it was used until 1997. The Lake Washington School District subsequently leased the Old Redmond Schoolhouse to the City of Redmond, which reopened it in 1999 for use as a community center.
Soldiering On
Along with the rest of the country, Redmond struggled with the Great Depression of the 1930s. Logging operations in the Redmond area were largely over by 1930, though some operations continued for another decade or so on the Sammamish Plateau. But in addition to the loss of logging jobs, the town struggled with other commercial losses. One was the Hotel Redmond, located just northwest of today's intersection of Leary Way and Bear Creek Parkway. The three-story building was built in 1889 as the home of Washington Supreme Court Justice William White and his wife (and Luke McRedmond's daughter) Emma McRedmond White. It was conveniently located next to Redmond's railroad depot, and the couple saw the opportunity and ran their dwelling as a hotel. William White died in 1914 and his wife continued to run the hotel, but she lost the property to foreclosure in 1932. The building became the clubhouse for a public golf course, the 18-hole Redmond Golf Links, which opened that same year and operated until 1981. Today the golf course is gone, but the building remains.
But with the passing of the old came the beginning of the new. In 1934 the Sammamish Slough Race began on the Sammamish River, which ran from Kenmore through Redmond to the northern shore of Lake Sammamish. The competition became a late winter/early spring classic for more than 40 years, attracting spectators far and wide and featuring plenty of thrills and spills by the racers themselves, who often reached 70 and 80 miles per hour on the straightaways. Interest in the race declined after a Corp of Engineers project straightened the river in the mid-1960s, making the race less challenging, and the event ended after a serious accident in 1976.
A second Redmond classic for which the city is more well-known is Derby Days, which began in 1939. The event, typically held in July or August, originally centered around a bicycle race around Lake Sammamish, but by the 1960s it had grown into an extravaganza that had a large parade and a new-car raffle. Deeply ingrained in the city's history, Derby Days is still held today. Bicycle races are no longer held around Lake Sammamish, though. In 2024 the races were held at Marymoor Park and the Jerry Baker Memorial Velodrome, also located at the park, as part of a larger two-day event that offered musicians, craft markets, carnival rides, and a drone show.
Redmond dealt with World War II (1941-1945) as did the rest of the country. Some of its men fought overseas, while at home, a lookout station to watch for Japanese aircraft was established. Briefly located at Avondale Road and Redmond Way, the station subsequently relocated in 1942 to a wooden tower located at Redmond Way and Gilman Street. After the war, the town soldiered on. The Redmond Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1945, and in 1950 Redmond opened its first town hall and fire station at 16510 NE 79th Street.
Redmond's population was 573 in 1950, an increase of 43 from 10 years earlier. Farming had replaced logging as one of the principal community mainstays, and there were vegetable farms, chicken farms, dairy farms – even a dozen-plus mink ranches in operation east of the town on Union Hill. But development and growth began slowly edging into the community during the 1950s, and in its first annexation since incorporation, Redmond added the Education Hill neighborhood in 1951, which nearly tripled its size. In 1955, the town's first shopping center opened south of Redmond Way at 168th Avenue NE.
The Saga of East Redmond
Though peripheral to Redmond's history, the saga of the town of East Redmond in the 1950s and 1960s is an unusual story in the community. In 1954 local resident Konstantin Dincov entered into an agreement with King County to allow the county to operate a large gravel pit on his 30-acre property east of Redmond, but this was so strongly opposed by his neighbors that they incorporated the town of East Redmond so they could pass an ordinance to stop the operations. The town was created from county land just east of Redmond in territory that measured 4 1/2 square miles. The townsite stretched north in a thin, uneven ribbon from the northeastern shore of Lake Sammamish through an area along either side of 196th Avenue NE to NE 85th Street, where it expanded east beyond 208th Avenue NE. The northern boundary of East Redmond reached just north of Novelty Hill Road.
East Redmond was born as a town of the fourth class on September 14, 1956, but it was on life support from the start. Years of litigation followed, including a partial disincorporation of three-quarters of the town the following year, which left an insufficient population to meet the minimum required for a municipality to remain incorporated in the state. The town responded with 13 annexations between 1957 and 1961, but it eventually came to naught. Superior Court Judge James W. Hodson ordered East Redmond disincorporated effective March 20, 1964, ruling that the 1956 incorporation was invalid as it exceeded the then-legal limit of one square mile for a fourth-class town, and further finding that the town lacked the 300 residents needed for incorporation within any one square mile of its boundaries. The town appealed, and the case ultimately went to the state supreme court, which affirmed the trial court's ruling in 1965. This made East Redmond only the second town to disincorporate in King County's history (Ravensdale was the first, about 40 years earlier).
From Town to City
The 1960s marked the beginning of Redmond's transition from town to city. Its population passed 1,500 in 1961, making it eligible to become a third-class city, and citizens resoundingly approved the requisite petition with a vote of 107 to 8. The new city expanded rapidly as the decade progressed. It annexed the Overlake neighborhood south of downtown in 1962, the Viewpoint neighborhood east of Overlake in 1964, and the Bear Creek neighborhood east of the city in 1966. Redmond cemented its status of an up-and-coming city that same year when it installed its first traffic light at the intersection of Leary Way and Redmond Way.
The 1960s also saw the birth of Marymoor Park, a 640-acre expanse on the city's southeastern edge. Though technically a part of King County, the park is nevertheless a crown jewel for the city. James Clise (1855-1938), a prominent Seattle businessman, first purchased 78 acres of the property in 1904. He built a sizeable mansion on the site, then called Willowmoor, expanded his holdings to nearly 400 acres, and established a successful farm. The property subsequently went through several owners between 1921 and 1962, when it was purchased by King County as its first park. It became known as Marymoor Park, and in 1968 the mansion opened as the Marymoor Museum, which grew into the Eastside's first history museum. In 2002, the museum closed and subsequently operated as an event venue in the park, which in 2025 also offered numerous other amenities. These included both natural and artificial athletic fields, the only velodrome in the region, a remote aircraft field, a large community garden, and a climbing wall.
Redmond's population in 1970 was 11,020, a nearly seven-fold increase in just a decade, and the city added another 12,000 people during the 1970s. More businesses arrived in the city, too – Eddie Bauer opened an outdoor-apparel store in Overlake in 1973, and Group Health Hospital also opened in Overlake in 1977. The city's downtown retained much of its rustic character, but east of downtown along Cleveland Street and Redmond Way, low-slung, modern strip malls were going up. Redmond was fast transforming into a pleasant, safe city, with good schools, affordable houses, and a growing business base.
A Pleasant Suburb
This business base boomed when the computer technology company Microsoft Corporation moved its headquarters from Bellevue to Overlake in February 1986. The initial Microsoft campus was located on 30 acres and had six buildings to house the company's 800 employees. It expanded to 260 acres in 1992, and further expansions (including a big one between 2007 and 2009) increased the size of the campus to 502 acres by 2017. Microsoft began a major remodel of its campus in 2019, demolishing 12 buildings and replacing them with 17 new ones, and adding nearly 3 million square feet of office space. In early 2025, work was continuing. In 2023, the City of Redmond reported that the company had more than 44,000 employees at its Redmond location alone.
By 1990, Redmond was well-established as a comfortable suburb of Seattle. It reportedly had the second-highest median household income among the state's largest cities, yet for many it remained an affordable place to live. More than 90 percent of its 35,800 residents were white, while Blacks made up between 1 and 2 percent of the total. A small but budding Asian community represented more than 6 percent of the city's population. The city continued to attract commercial development as well. The Bella Bottega shopping center opened in 1993 southwest of NE 90th Street and 161st Avenue NE as a small complex, but it has since expanded to 180,000 square feet. But it pales in comparison to Redmond Town Center, which opened in August 1997.
The construction of Redmond Town Center, built on the site of the former Redmond Golf Links, was not without controversy. During the 1980s and early 1990s there was considerable debate about its construction, with residents especially concerned that a sterile shopping center would adversely affect the overall "feel" of Redmond. Developers took this to heart and designed an open-air walkable mall made to resemble the city's downtown. The $250 million, two-level complex offered a cineplex and 64 stores and restaurants when it first opened. But it was built to grow, and grow it has – in 2025, Redmond Town Center offered more than 120 stores, 20 restaurants, and three hotels spread out over 1.6-million square feet.
Redmond recorded 45,256 residents in 2000, but its makeup was changing. Though whites still made up more than three-quarters of the city's population, the city's Asian community had nearly tripled in just 10 years and represented more than 13 percent of the city's residents. For much of the first decade of the twenty-first century, Redmond retained its late twentieth-century feel as a pleasant and affordable Eastside suburb. However, property values soared as the decade wore on, and after a dip during the Great Recession of the late 2000s and early 2010s, resumed their climb. Housing prices in the city eventually rose out of reach for those with moderate incomes.
Transformation
Dramatic changes came to Redmond's commercial district during the 2010s and 2020s. An area located east of the Sammamish River between NE 85th Street and Bear Creek Parkway and extending southeast to Avondale Way was transformed into a modern mecca of six-to-eight story apartments, hotels, office buildings, and mixed-use buildings. A Redmond resident who left in 2015 and returned a decade later without knowing of the development would have been shocked at the changes; in places, they would have had trouble recognizing where they were.
The transformation was part of a broader city plan to give Redmond more of a community feel, providing a more pleasant ambiance and bringing services closer together so residents could walk or bike to their destination and not drive if they chose not to. The plan included creating a common community space downtown for residents to gather and visit, and the city did just that by developing a two-acre park in the heart of downtown Redmond, aptly named Downtown Park. The park opened in September 2018, and is located between Redmond Way and Cleveland Street just east of 161st Avenue. It offers a "great lawn" and a pavilion and stage which showcases community events, cultural arts programs, and other recreational activities.
Redmond celebrated another milestone in April 2024 with the arrival of light rail. The long-planned project, which envisioned a rail link between Seattle and Redmond, began with the passage in 2008 of Sound Transit 2, a sales tax measure designed to raise funds for the construction of light rail from Seattle to Overlake by 2020. Sound Transit 3, another tax increase passed eight years later, provided funding to expand rail service into downtown Redmond by 2025. Construction of the East Link Extension began in 2016, but defective concrete ties on the I-90 section of the line delayed completion of the segment from Seattle to the South Bellevue station. Construction of the Eastside line from Bellevue to Redmond continued, and the 6.5-mile link between the two cities opened April 27, 2024, with the new Redmond Technology Station in Overlake serving as the temporary eastern terminus. As of April 2025, the remaining 3.4 miles of the Eastside segment was scheduled to open May 10, 2025, with the simultaneous opening of two additional stations in Redmond: Marymoor Village and the Downtown Redmond station. It was hoped that the link from Seattle to Bellevue would open by the end of the year.
Redmond has evolved into a vibrant, modern city encompassing more than 17 square miles. Its new and still-growing commercial district reflects this change, and so do its current demographics, because by 2020 Redmond was no longer a majority-white municipality. The U.S. Census estimated Redmond had 80,280 residents in 2024, with whites said to make up 48.7 percent of the population and Asians reported to represent 39 percent of the total, giving the city a multi-cultural feel that was almost impossible to imagine just a generation ago.
