Larsen Lake Blueberry Farm

Larsen Lake carries the name of Danish immigrants Ove Peter and Mary Larsen, who took up 160 acres near the water in 1889 [1]. Ove worked the Newcastle coal mines while his wife and children raised vegetables and gathered wild berries to sell [1]. He left for Seattle in 1916, and the Aries family took over the farming [1]. The Aries brothers had bought half of Larsen's property in 1913, and their operation there shipped produce as far off as Alaska, the Philippines and Yukon Territory [1]. In 1944 the entrepreneur Louis Weinzirl bought 45 acres of farmland and set it out in blueberries, sowing several varieties so the picking could run from early July into mid-September [1]. Over the years the lake picked up the unofficial name Blueberry Lake [1]. The Weinzirls stepped back from the blueberry farm in the 1960s, and in 1970 the city of Bellevue bought the farm, adding it to the land that became Lake Hills Greenbelt Park [1].