Shoreline began in 1890 with the platting of the neighborhood of Richmond Beach, on Puget Sound, in anticipation of the arrival of the Great Northern Railway the next year. Over the next two decades, Shoreline was connected to Seattle via the Seattle-Everett Interurban streetcar line (1906) and North Trunk Road (now Aurora Avenue N., State Route 99) (1913), helping to increase its population.
The name “Shoreline” was applied to this stretch of unincorporated King County in 1944 when it was given to the school district, since the school district boundaries stretched from “Shore to Shore” (Puget Sound to Lake Washington) and “Line to Line” (the old Seattle city limit of 85th St to the Snohomish County Line). Though the modern borders of the city do not stretch to Lake Washington, the area has kept the “Shoreline” name.
After the incorporation of Lake Forest Park in 1961, the remainder of the Shoreline School District remained an unincorporated portion of King County. The school district remained the main identifier for the area for several decades; a set of welcome signs were installed in 1983 by the Shoreline Chamber of Commerce bearing the name. The City of Seattle began studying an annexation of the area in 1988, causing local residents to organize an incorporation measure to retain their separate school system. A half-century after it had been named, on August 31, 1995, Shoreline was officially incorporated as a code city, and it adopted the council–manager form of government.
