An area resident since 1993, Redmond Realtor Ron Horsman remembers when “the Eastside” meant Duvall, Carnation and Bothell, while Redmond was made of “horse pastures and a little airfield that looked like a marsh.”

“Microsoft is why we are the way we are today,” he said.

Redmond came from a humble beginning. It first incorporated Dec. 31, 1912, after a scramble to achieve the necessary 300 people in population. At that time it emcompassed three square blocks, a mere sliver of today's more than 17 square miles. In 196o, its population was 1,426. Today the number is closer to 50,000, and the city includes nine schools and more than 5,000 businesses.

Much of that growth is due to a single company: Microsoft. The software giant, which moved into Redmond in 1986, employs more than 30,000 full-time workers and thousands more contractors in the 8 million square feet of office space it holds in the Eastside region.

Nowhere is Microsoft’s influence on Redmond’s landscape more pronounced than in the corridor surrounding state Route 520. Microsoft's buildings line the roadway like an artificial canyon, especially where the Overlake Transit Center’s sculptures surround ramps at Northeast 40th Street and at the site of a new overpass across the highway that consumed $11 million in federal stimulus funds.

Horsman said the company has had a less direct but still visible impact on Redmond at large, with the wealth it’s brought into the area helping to secure funding for parks, shopping areas such as Redmond Town Center, and the educational system.

“We’re saturated with Microsoft,” he said.

As a longtime visitor to one of Redmond’s main attractions for dog-lovers, Marymoor Park, Seattle resident Vicki Martinez agrees.

“The 'old Redmond' and current Redmond seem like different worlds," Martinez said. "We go to Redmond now for some of the same reasons, like meeting friends for a meal or going to Marymoor .... We don't generally run into ranchers or cowboys there anymore, though.”

Although it seems certain that Microsoft will continue to exert its influence on Redmond and its environs, the pace of the change has slowed. In 2009, the company announced a three-year delay on construction planned for the Redmond campus. While it’s biding its time on physical development, it will certainly continue to shape the city’s cultural and financial ups and downs in coming years.