Newcastle was named after Newcastle upon Tyne in England as it was a coal mining town founded in the 1870s, and also because it had a large number of settlers from North East England living in the region. Coal was discovered along Coal Creek in 1863. The surveyors Philip H. Lewis and Edwin Richardson made the discovery while surveying the area for the General Land Office. By 1872 75-100 tons of coal per day were being produced at Newcastle. About 60 men worked at the mines. The Seattle and Walla Walla Railroad, the first railroad in King County, reached Newcastle from Seattle in 1878. Coal mining ended in 1963.
The area was an unincorporated area within King County until it incorporated as a city on September 30, 1994. Currently the city is a suburban community. Based on Newcastle’s location north of Renton, south of Bellevue, and across Lake Washington from Seattle, these are the communities in which most of the residents of Newcastle work. East of southeast Lake Washington is a large quantity of hilly terrain, which creates opportunities for view properties. This created the impetus for the location of the Newcastle Golf Course, along with many high-value homes at higher elevations with views of downtown Bellevue, Seattle, and Mercer Island, as well as the Olympic Mountains. Notable attractions of the area include the Golf Club at Newcastle, a brand new Family YMCA, Lake Boren Park, a well developed trail system, and nearby Cougar Mountain in the east of Newcastle.
Newcastle and Newport Hills
The community was not always known as Newcastle. When suburban development came in the 1960s, the old mining town of Newcastle was long gone and all but forgotten. The area then became known as Newport Hills.
In the early 1990s there was a movement to incorporate as a new city. But some members of the community objected—some believed that the new city would be too small to be viable, while others feared that the city council would be in the pocket of the hilltop golf course. In 1993, five parcels of Newport Hills each voted to annex themselves into Bellevue. Those 5 parcels comprised nearly half the population of the community. They became the Newport Hills neighborhood of Bellevue. When Newport Hills incorporated as a new city the following year, their first order of business was to choose a new name, since it would now be confusing to have a city of Newport Hills adjacent to the Newport Hills neighborhood of Bellevue. Residents voted on Cougar Mountain and Newcastle, and chose the latter.
