Bainbridge Island Homes For Sale

Bainbridge Island is located west of Seattle in Puget Sound.  Homes for sale in Bainbridge Island include foreclosures (bank-owned homes), short sales, new construction, luxury and traditional resale homes.  Home styles range from condos to townhomes and single-family homes.

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Bainbridge Island, WA

Bainbridge Island is an upscale island located just a short ferry ride west of Seattle. Technically a part of Kitsap County, many residents commute into Seattle and King County daily on the ferries. Bainbridge Island is about 5 miles wide and 10 miles long, covering nearly 20,000 acres. With a population of 23,000, this bedroom community has become well-known to residents on both sides of Puget Sound and even named one of the best places to live in the country by CNN/Money. The downtown district of Bainbridge Island, known as Winslow, is easily accessed by foot from the ferry docks and provides potential for a car-free lifestyle for the Seattle commuter.

Bainbridge Island, Washington

Bainbridge Island is a city and island in Kitsap County, Washington, United States, located in Puget Sound. The population was 23,025 at the 2010 census and an estimated 25,298 in 2019, making Bainbridge Island the second largest city in Kitsap County.

The island is separated from the Kitsap Peninsula by Port Orchard, with Bremerton lying to the southwest. Bainbridge Island is connected to Seattle via the Washington State Ferries system and to Poulsbo and the Suquamish Indian Reservation by State Route 305, which uses the Agate Pass Bridge.

In July 2005, CNN/Money and Money magazine named Bainbridge Island the second-best place to live in the United States.

In August 2013, Bainbridge Island was recognized by Google with an eCity Award. This award recognizes the strongest online business community in each state.

Washington State Ferries ferry landing on Bainbridge Island

History

For thousands of years, members of the Suquamish people and their ancestors lived on the land now called Bainbridge Island. There were nine villages on the island; this included winter villages at Port Madison, Battle Point, Point White, Lynwood Center, Port Blakely, and Eagle Harbor, as well as summer villages at Manzanita, Fletcher Bay, and Rolling Bay.

In 1792, English explorer Captain George Vancouver spent several days with his ship HMS Discovery anchored off Restoration Point at the southern end of Bainbridge Island while boat parties surveyed other parts of Puget Sound. Vancouver spent a day exploring Rich Passage, Port Orchard, and Sinclair Inlet. He failed to find Agate Passage, and so his maps show Bainbridge Island as a peninsula. Vancouver named Restoration Point on May 29, the anniversary of the English Restoration, in honor of King Charles II.

In 1841, US Navy Lieutenant Charles Wilkes visited the island while surveying the Pacific Northwest. Lt. Wilkes named the island after Commodore William Bainbridge, commander of the frigate USS Constitution in the War of 1812. Settlers originally used Bainbridge Island as a center for the logging and shipbuilding industries. The island was known for huge and accessible cedars, which were especially in demand for ships' masts. The original county seat of Kitsap County was at Port Madison on the island's north end.

A group of Japanese-American residents of Bainbridge Island wave the American flag and give the victory sign as they are forcibly sent to an internment camp, March 30, 1942.

In 1855, the Suquamish tribe relinquished their claim to Bainbridge Island by signing the Point Elliott Treaty. The Suquamish agreed to cede all of their territory (which included Bainbridge Island) to the United States in exchange for a reservation at Port Madison and fishing rights to Puget Sound.

The first generation of Japanese immigrants, the Issei, came in 1883. During World War II, Japanese-American residents of Bainbridge Island were the first to be sent to internment camps, an event commemorated by the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial, which opened in 2011. They were held by the US government through the duration of the war for fear of espionage. Many Filipinos who assisted the Japanese farmers were left to operate the strawberry fields, which they did successfully. Filipino farmers went north to locate First Nations families to work in the fields. Many romances arose from the berry fields, and the birth of the Indo-Pinos emerged.

The city of Bainbridge Island has occupied the entire island since February 28, 1991, when the former city of Winslow (around 1.5 square miles (3.9 km2) of land on Eagle Harbor, incorporated August 9, 1947) annexed the rest of the island. Since the 1960s, Bainbridge Island has become an increasingly affluent bedroom community of Seattle, a 35-minute ride away on the Washington State Ferries.

Geography

Bainbridge Island was formed during the last ice age—13,000 to 15,000 years ago—when the 3,000-foot-thick (910 m) Vashon Glacier scraped out the Puget Sound and Hood Canal basins.

Bainbridge Island is located within the Puget Sound Basin, east of the Kitsap Peninsula, directly east of the Manette Peninsula and west of the city of Seattle. The island is approximately 5 miles (8 km) wide and 10 miles (16 km) long, encompassing nearly 17,778 acres (71.95 km2), and is one of the larger islands in Puget Sound.

The ferry Wenatchee en route from Seattle to Bainbridge Island

Bainbridge Island shorelines border the main body of Puget Sound, as well as Port Orchard Bay, a large protected embayment, and two high-current tidal passages, Rich Passage and Agate Pass. The island is characterized by an irregular coastline of approximately 53 miles (85 km), with numerous bays and inlets and a significant diversity of other coastal land forms, including spits, bluffs, dunes, lagoons, cuspate forelands, tombolos, tide flats, streams and tidal deltas, islands, and rocky outcrops. The high point is 425-foot (130 m) Toe Jam Hill.

Aerial view of the northern part of Bainbridge Island adjoining Puget Sound, with Agate Passage in center, Liberty Bay on the Kitsap Peninsula in the background, and the Hood Canal beyond

On the Kitsap Peninsula, Bremerton and Poulsbo lie across the Port Orchard channel to the west, and the city of Port Orchard lies across Rich Passage to the south.

The island is quite hilly and is known for its popular Chilly Hilly bicycle ride every February. This ride has been the unofficial start to the bicycling season in the Pacific Northwest since 1975.

Bainbridge Island is connected to the Kitsap Peninsula by the Agate Pass Bridge, carrying SR 305 over Agate Passage. The only other public way off the island is by the Seattle–Bainbridge ferry, the Washington State Ferries service from the dock at Winslow in Eagle Harbor to Colman Dock (Pier 52) in Seattle.

Aerial view of Bainbridge Island from the southeast, showing the Bainbridge Island ferry from Seattle making the first of two turns to bring it into Eagle Harbor, with Blakely Harbor to its left

Economy

Bainbridge Island has four centers of commerce. Winslow is the downtown core and has most of the shopping and dining. Lynwood Center on the south end of the island has several restaurants and a small hotel. Fletcher Bay, which is centrally located, has a small grocery store and one restaurant. Rolling Bay, on the east side of the island, is a small commercial center with Bay Hay and Feed, the Bud Hawk Post Office and several commercial shops.

Education

Public schools

Bainbridge Island is served by the Bainbridge Island School District, which houses the following public schools:

• Capt. Johnston Blakely Elementary School (K-4)
• Capt. Charles Wilkes Elementary School (K-4)
• Ordway Elementary School (K-4)
• Sonoji Sakai Intermediate School (5-6)
• Woodward Middle School (7-8)
• Bainbridge High School (9-12)

BISD also offers home-based and student-directed educational programming under the umbrella of the Commodore Options School:

• Mosaic Home Education Partnership (K-8)
• Odyssey Multiage Program (1-8)
• Eagle Harbor High School (9-12)

Private schools

• Montessori Country School (PK-6)
• Madrona School (PK-8)
• St. Cecilia Catholic School (PK-8)
• The Island School (K-5)
• Carden Country School (K-8)
• Hyla Middle School (6-8)

The Puget Sound Naval Academy, formerly the Moran School, operated on the island from 1914 to 1933, and then again from 1937 to 1951.

Mt. Rainier seen from Bainbridge Island

Sports and recreation

The community has been especially concerned with preserving green space and keeping a tight control over development, both residential and commercial. The Bainbridge Island Land Trust, city and park district are instrumental in maintaining island open space.

Sports programs are successful. In 2001, Bainbridge Island Little League were represented in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania at the Little League World Series. The island's high school lacrosse team is known for numerous state titles, the most recent coming on May 19, 2007 over rival Mercer Island. The island's high school sailing team has been the reigning Northwest Interscholastic Sailing Association district double handed team racing champions for the past five seasons and is ranked 12th in the nation. In 2009 the Bainbridge High School Fastpitch team won the Washington 3A State Title. The team also played in the championship game in 2010. In 2018 the Bainbridge High School Girls Lacrosse team won the state championship.

The sport of pickleball was invented by the family of congressman Joel Pritchard at their summer home on Bainbridge Island in 1965. It is similar to badminton and tennis, but played with paddles and a lightweight plastic ball.

In popular culture

The fictional San Piedro Island in the 1994 novel Snow Falling on Cedars is based on Bainbridge Island. The novel's author, David Guterson, lives on the island and worked for ten years as a teacher at Bainbridge High School.

In Michael Crichton's 1994 novel Disclosure, protagonist Tom Sanders lives with his wife and two children on Bainbridge Island. Some scenes from the film adaptation later that year were filmed on the island, including at Bainbridge Ferry Terminal and Capt. Johnston Blakely Elementary School.

The epilogue of the 1996 film That Thing You Do! reveals that main characters Guy Patterson and Faye Dolan moved with their four children to Bainbridge Island, where they founded the fictional Puget Sound Conservatory of Music.

Bainbridge Island is featured in the first episode of the fifteenth season of the HGTV reality television series Island Life.

Photo gallery

 

Stone Sculptures at Winslow Wharf Marina

 

Cottages on Bainbridge Island

 

Docks and forest clearing on Bainbridge Island

 

Mist surrounds the marina.

 

Seattle-bound cars waiting at Bainbridge Island Ferry Terminal

 

Bainbridge Island Museum of Art

Source Wikipedia

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