Sammamish
Incorporated Aug. 31, 1999, Sammamish is just getting started as a city.
Located about 10 miles east of Seattle, Sammamish occupies 21 square miles mostly on the Sammamish Plateau. Its boundary is defined roughly by Lake Sammamish on the west, Issaquah on the south and Redmond and the Redmond-Fall City Road on the north.
Its eastern front is pushed up against what is known as the "urban-growth boundary," a sawtoothed demarcation drawn north and south through east King County to slow (if not stop) sprawl.
Sammamish occupies a setting created by Pine Lake, Beaver Lake and a rural environment that in the late 1980s began surrendering to tracts of million-dollar houses and automobile congestion.
But not without a fight.
Among the city's most immediate challenges has been to work on the traffic congestion created during the plateau's unincorporated period when development was encouraged by King County but road improvements were not.
The city of Sammamish offers its residents a council-manager form of government in which the seven-member City Council hires a professional manager to carry out its policies. The council elects a mayor, mostly ceremonial, from among the seven members.