Sammamish ( ) is a city in King County, Washington, United States. The population was 67,455 at the 2020 census. Located on a plateau, the city is bordered by Lake Sammamish to the west and the Snoqualmie Valley to the east. Sammamish is situated 20 miles east of Seattle, is a member of the Eastside, and is a part of the Seattle metropolitan area. Sammamish is an affluent community and has been ranked as one of the wealthiest cities in Washington.
Etymology
The word "Sammamish" is a Snoqualmie name that comes from the Snoqualmie words "squax"- Sammamish Lake, and "abs", a suffix used to describe people of a specific area. So the name can roughly be translated to "people of Lake Sammamish" in the Snoqualmie language.
History
Lake Sammamish and the adjacent plateau has been Duwamish, Suquamish, Snoqualmie, Sammamish, and Snohomish territory since the last Pleistocene glaciation, before contact with European people. They lived in longhouse villages in seven places on and near the coast of Sammamish Lake. Two of them were in present-day Sammamish.
The Sammamish Plateau was part of unincorporated King County for most of its recorded history. The first settlers arrived in the 1870s and established a trio of resorts by the 1930s. The plateau remained a mostly rural area until suburban homes, shopping centers, and schools were built in the 1970s and 1980s. However, from approximately 1900 through the Great Depression, there was a tiny hamlet in Inglewood community (at today's Weber Point) of ~50 people who called the area "Sammamish", and later, in the 1960s, there was a suburban community and school at what is now Sunny Hills. A vote in 1991 to join neighboring Issaquah failed, as did a vote on incorporation the following year. A renewed movement to become a city, born of frustration with development policies set by the county government, met with voter approval in 1998. Sammamish was officially incorporated on August 31, 1999. The city annexed Klahanie on January 1, 2016.
Geography
According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which are land and are water.
The city is situated on the shores and hilly terrain east of Lake Sammamish. It is bordered to the south by Issaquah, to the northwest by Redmond, and to the west across Lake Sammamish by Bellevue. Beaver Lake and Pine Lake are the two biggest lakes in Sammamish.
Sammamish is in and near the Issaquah Alps, a westward extension of the Cascade foothills.
Climate
The city has a mild marine west coast or oceanic climate (closely bordering on a Csb), or a typical warm-summer mediterranean climate.
Summers are relatively mild, and winters are cold with low temperatures near freezing and some snow. Extremes range from in February 1950, to in June 2021. The average high in the hottest month, August, is , and the average low in the coldest month, January, is . The most common form of below-freezing weather occurs during a high-pressure system, where cold, clear nights and sunny but chilly days ensue.
Climate change
Sammamish is predicted to warm by 3-12 F (2-7 C) before 2100 regardless of future emissions, and around 2.5 F during the next few decades due to climate change. Warming by any significant amount will cause Sammamish to have reduced snowfall, hotter and drier summers, and more warm-season extreme weather events.
Sammamish's climate change action plan includes, but is not limited to, tree replacement, voluntary planting, protecting threatened species, protecting native fish such as Chinook salmon and the streams, lakes and ponds they live in, floodplain management, wetland protection, emission reduction, light/noise pollution reduction, toxin (pesticide) control, and many other measures.
Surrounding cities
Demographics
According to the 2019 American Community Survey estimate, the median income for a household in the city is $188,120, and the median income for a family is $188,083. The per capita income for the city was $70,377. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that the median household income in Sammamish was $183,038 in 2018, placing it first among U.S. cities with a population greater than 65,000.
Forbes ranked Sammamish 1st in its 2012 list of the "Friendliest Towns in the United States". Sammamish is also ranked as the 5th safest city in the U.S. In 2007, CNN Money ranked Sammamish as the 11th Best Place to Live in the United States, and subsequently ranked it as #12 in 2009 and #15 in 2011. Sammamish was also ranked the 9th Best Place to Live by Money.com in 2018.