Mercer Island is a city in King County, Washington, the United States, located on an island of the same name in the southern portion of Lake Washington. Mercer Island is in the Seattle metropolitan area, with Seattle to its west and Bellevue to its east.
The western side of the island was home to two villages prior to white settlement in the Puget Sound region. Mercer Island, named for the Mercer family of Seattle, was first settled by non-indigenous people between 1870 and 1880. The Mercer brothers often rowed between the island and Seattle to pick berries, hunt, and fish. Those brothers, Thomas Mercer and Asa Mercer were members of the Mercer family of the first large settlement, East Seattle, which was toward the northwest side of the island—near the McGilvara neighborhood. In 1889, built a large and gilded resort, the Calkins Hotel. The hotel was reached via the Guests including the President of 1901, amongst other well-to-do dignitaries from Seattle to the East Coast of the United States. Burned by a mysterious fire, the hotel was razed in 1908.