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is a city in King County, Washington, United States. The town was made famous by David Lynch's television series
(also filmed in nearby Snoqualmie.) Since the Weyerhaeuser sawmill closed, North Bend has become an upscale bedroom community for the Eastside of Seattle, Washington, with property values more than doubling from 1997 to 2006. The population was 4,746 at the 2000 census.
North Bend is home to Nintendo North Bend, the main North American production facility and distribution center for the video game console manufacturer Nintendo.
Based on per capita income, one of the more reliable measures of affluence, North Bend ranks 52nd of 522 areas in the state of Washington to be ranked.
The Native Americans who inhabited the Snoqualmie Valley, lead by Chief Patkanim, sided with settlers in the wars of the 1850s and, with the Treaty of Point Elliott, lost such title as settlers acknowledged. Some of the soldiers in those wars, such as the brothers Kellogg, established cabins near their blockhouses; however the first permanent settler in the valley was Jeremiah Borst, in 1858.
In 1865, Matts Peterson homesteaded the site that ultimately became North Bend. Deeply in debt, he sold the property to Borst and moved east of the mountains. Borst wrote to Will Taylor, who had left the area to go mining in California, and offered him the Peterson place in exchange for labor.
Taylor returned and prospered as a farmer and operator of a trading post. He platted North Bend as
. However, the Post Office Department objected to the name Mountain View, so it was renamed
after its location near the north bend of the South Fork of the Snoqualmie River. North Bend was officially incorporated on March 12, 1909.