What if you were told there was a Bavarian village at the foot of
the Cascade Mountains in Washington state? That flower boxes sat in row after
row of windows? That accordion players roamed the streets? That a brewery
served up fresh-made beer and spicy sausages? That quaintness abounded just a
couple of hours from Seattle and 30 minutes from a ski resort? That its
calendar was full of festivals?
If you’re like me, you’d wonder at the thought of it and
immediately want to visit such a place. You might wonder how it came to be.
Perhaps German pioneers settled it last century, as they did central Texas. Or
maybe they started it after World War II, as they did some of the ski towns in
Colorado.
Well, as Paul Harvey would say, here’s the rest of the story. The
real Leavenworth, Washington, has existed since pioneer days. However, it’s
been Bavarian for just over 30 years. It seems that when the Great Northern
Railroad pulled out in the early 1960s, the town pretty much dried up. So they
decided to remake themselves. And since the town of Winthrop, facing the same
situation, had already gone for an Old West theme, Leavenworth’s leaders put
their heads together and proclaimed, “Let’s go Bavarian!”
And boy, did they go Bavarian. The whole of downtown was
transformed by building codes which forced even the Burger King to go with the
quaint roof, the flower boxes, and the Olde World lettering. The Welcome sign
became a Willkommen sign. The accordion and the yodeler became the sounds of
the street. Even the sporting goods store had to become Der Sportsmann.
Two things are apparent when you arrive in Leavenworth: One, it’s
a strange little place; and two, Project Alpine worked like a charm.
Leavenworth, a town of 2,100 people, gets more than a million visitors per
year now. At least half of them were there when I pulled into town with a
friend and former Memphian now living in Seattle.
We were there for the whitewater rafting — there are seven
rafting companies in town — so we did that before wading into the fog of
Bavarian charm. My theory has always been to sample a place’s nature first,
and the nature in that part of the world is astounding. Leavenworth sits on
the edge of the desert and at the foot of the mountains, with the Wenatchee
River rolling right through the middle of town. Stevens Pass ski area is just
up the road, and the Wenatchee National Forest stretches for 135 miles along
the mountains.
The Wenatchee is pretty mellow as far as whitewater goes, but
when it’s close to 90 degrees it’s perfectly nice to just get a few splashes
here and there and otherwise enjoy the scenery. All the local fauna were out:
We saw ospreys sitting in nests with their young, vultures soaring, salmon
leaping, trout darting, and rednecks throwing things off bridges.
But, as always, the most interesting thing about the whitewater
trip was not the river. Here’s a suggestion: Next time you go on a guided trip
down a river, sit near the guide and start a conversation. Our guide, Megan,
had been in the Peace Corps for three years, working as a beekeeper in
Paraguay. This was one of her last trips of the year on the Wenatchee; after
this she’d be off to some other rivers for the rest of the summer, then
“do some traveling this fall and wait for the snow to fall again.”
Ho hum, another day in the life.
Off the river, we headed into town for lunch. We had kielbasa and
bratwurst at the brewery, where, in keeping with modern-day Pacific Northwest
attitudes, they offer such beers as Blind Pig Ale. No one could explain this,
but the kielbasa was good.
We wandered the main drag where an accordionist was playing hits
from The Sound of Music to a crowd of families licking ice cream cones.
We saw shops filled with sculpted candles, beer steins, “authentic
European gifts,” cuckoo clocks, music boxes (at Die Musik Box),
gingerbread, chocolates, old-time photos, and “everything needed to build
that miniature dream house.” It was all the detritus of Tourist Country,
in short, but with a Bavarian twist.
Heading back up Route 2 toward Seattle — a road with an espresso
stand roughly every quarter-mile — I was trying to process this little Alpine
experience we had just been on. My first reaction was to blow off the whole
place as a cheesy tourist trap, but then I thought, You know, more power to
Leavenworth. They have a right to earn a living up there, and since the cowboy
theme was already taken, why not Bavaria? Next time I’ll just spend a little
more time on the river.
