Adjacent affluent city · Medina
Medina
An adjacent lakeside city west of Bellevue, the wealthy 'Gold Coast' enclave home to some of the world's richest residents.
Medina is a small, affluent city on the eastern shore of Lake Washington immediately west of Bellevue, occupying about 1.43 square miles between Meydenbauer Bay and Evergreen Point. It is connected to Seattle by State Route 520 across the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge, the longest floating bridge in the world.
The area was cleared for timber in the 1870s, and Seattle businessman Thomas Dabney established the first permanent settler claim in 1886, building a ferry dock around 1890. The settlement, briefly called Flordeline, was renamed Medina in 1891, platted in 1914, and incorporated on August 19, 1955.
Medina's first mansions rose in the 1920s as wealthy Seattle businessmen built waterfront estates, earning the area the nickname Washington's Gold Coast. With a 2020 population of 2,915, very low density, and median household incomes well into the six figures, Medina is among the wealthiest communities in the country, home to figures such as Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.