Today’s Eastside is a hub of intense activity. There is traffic. There are stores. There are countless languages spoken even at the simplest of bus stops. There is also a variety of industries – high-tech and otherwise – far beyond the scope that any one person can imagine.

But a Chicken Ranch?

Imagine that; one of the region’s largest chicken farms was right here, along what has become one of the Eastside’s busiest boulevards. The pictures above show hen houses on 148th, and what life on the Eastside would have been like nearly 100 years ago on a working chicken farm. That farm eventually became a legacy, even honored in later years as the property changed hands.

Along the 148th Avenue corridor there has been an extreme land-use shift, moving from one end of the spectrum to the other in mere decades. This and other examples throughout the area lend evidence to a simple fact: East King County’ rural past between Lake Washington and Lake Sammamish is slowly disappearing. Non-agricultural businesses and subdivisions now occupy much of the soil that once held farmland.

Think of it as trading coops for cubicles.

The stunning Mrs. Clark recalls the days of “Eighty Acres,” where kids would sneak off to ride their bikes on hand-cut trails and generally hang out for the summer – before the first Microsoft campus was built on 156th. It is that type of change that has seen its way up and down the 148th corridor, especially around NE 60th. While today’s highlight is actually in Redmond – like Eighty Acres – Bellevue and its Municipal Golf Course are just across the road, on the west side of 148th.

North Bellevue’s boundaries look like the top of a skyscraper towards NE 60th Street, between 140th and 148th. It is the farthest north section of the City. Back in the day, the Morelli Chicken Ranch was on the east side of 148th; in 1915 four brothers from Italy bought out an existing farm there and started raising chickens. Each brother had a home on the property. The family also owned land right across the street, on what is now “the Bellevue side” of 148th. The area around the family was still very rural in the early 20th century; the brothers eventually had to run their own wire for half a mile to electrify the farm. In 1936, this quiet corner of unincorporated King County still looked the part:

The star in the photo is right in front of Silvio Morelli’s house on the farm; Zillow lists the build date on the house as 1928, but a Seattle Times obituary indicates that Silvio and Albarosa Morelli moved their family into the home when it was completed in 1936. The long chicken houses can be seen in the background, along with two other residences. According to the obituary for Tito Morelli in 1991, the extended Morelli family “were their own best neighbors for many years.”

In this 1943 aerial photo, the farm looked very neat and tidy from above:

By the 1940s the Morellis started using timers for their lights in the barns; by timing the lights to come on at 4:00am, the family made egg laying more productive. While the Morellis sold mostly to stores, and had no signage on 148th, consumers would still drive out from Seattle to buy their eggs. That trip was no small feat back then, since 520 didn’t exist and all other roads were two lanes at the most. The family retired from the egg business in the early 1970s. Land on “the Bellevue side” was sold to development and subdivisions. The barns and outbuildings behind the house remained for about twenty years after that. Microsoft bought the remaining land in the early 1990s, and allowed the family’s last resident – Mrs. Albarosa Morelli – to live in the house until she entered assisted care around 1998. She died the following year at the age of 84. Many of the family’s descendants – sons and daughters of the four Morelli brothers – still live in the area.

Even though 148th has been developed heavily over the last thirty years, notice something in the pictures below:

The Morelli farm house is still there!

Seventy-plus years later the house is still well groomed and solid.The property appears to hold a nice simple residence, but one encircled by a very high tech sprinkler system dug into the yard. The system was making all sorts of steampunk noises underground when I was on the sidewalk in front of the house, and eventually it started spitting heavy steam or mist out over the lawn in grandiose form.

Could that be considered passive home protection since it started when I arrived?

Today the chicken barns are long gone, replaced now by Microsoft’s ominous multi-level complex behind the bushes. A tree next to the house stands several stories tall, as a testament to the decades that once saw it as a small bush. The color and uniformity of the grass are quite stunning. Traffic on 148th is loud…and fast; the speed limit is 40mph in this stretch. Thankfully, sidewalks are wide and safe. 148th today is a four-lane far cry from the gravel road that once ran past the house.

And the neighbors now buy eggs at the store.

While the shift from farming to high-tech was never imagined for this parcel 100 years ago, it’s nice to see that the tidy old house is still with us – facing the street it has guarded now since the 1930s. So long as it is there, the Morelli home can serve as a marker for the industry that once lay across the property in the area’s rural past. Next week: another look at a different corner of Bellevue, as we find more history buried beneath our feet. Until then…

Enjoy the view!

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