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Leavenworth,
Washington
LEAVENWORTH
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Name
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Leavenworth,
Washington is a charming Bavarian Village known
for delightful specialty shops, numerous choices for cozy accommodations, and an active
calendar offering a year-round schedule of festivals, music and live theater. Perhaps the most
popular of the events is the Christmas Lighting and Ice Fest. The quaint, Bavarian
theme is very at home against the breathtaking backdrop of
Washington State's steep, snowy
Cascade Mountains soaring
thousands of feet above.
History
As you wander past the Bavarian architecture, imbibe
the Germanic fare and browse through the many inviting specialty shops, you are enjoying
the fruits of a well-laid plan. For Leavenworth’s is the inspiring story of a
Washington town
that reinvented itself. With the loss of its railway and timber industries, Leavenworth
was a town in slow decline. In the early 1960s, it took the brave and determined decision
to invest in tourism for its future. Inspired by the resemblance of the surrounding
countryside to Bavarian Germany, with its mountain wilderness and rolling meadows,
Leavenworth was remodeled as a Bavarian alpine village. Such was the town's commitment to
the project that the Bavarian theme was carefully researched, architects were
hired (notably Heintz Ulbricht),
building codes were changed and townspeople took to learning about the German culture.
Der Markt Platz (Front and 8th streets) has daily showings of a 30-minute film
which tells this story.
Projekt Bayern
continues to develop the Bavarian vision. Such is the success of the project that nowadays
not just tourists are attracted to the area, but also many people of direct German,
Austrian and Norwegian descent have been drawn to Leavenworth as their new home.
The town now boasts a German language newspaper, the Pazifische Rundschau.
Name
Originally known as Icicle, the township was renamed
after Captain Charles Leavenworth, president of the Okanagon Investment Company (one of
the first commercial developers in this area
of Washington), and a stockholder in the Great Northern
Railway.
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