Tumwater Canyon and the Bavarian Reinvention of Leavenworth
Near Leavenworth, Washington
As the highway drops down the eastern side of the range toward Leavenworth, it plunges into Tumwater Canyon, a narrow, steep walled gorge where the Wenatchee River churns through whitewater below the road. This canyon was once the path of the railroad too. But snowslides and rockfall made it treacherous, and in the late nineteen twenties the Great Northern rerouted its main line away, sending trains north along the Chumstick valley instead.
The old railroad bed through the canyon became the roadway you travel today. At the mouth of the canyon sits Leavenworth, and its story is one of reinvention. When the railroad moved its operations to Wenatchee in the nineteen twenties, and the sawmills closed, the little timber town began to die.
In the early nineteen sixties, desperate residents launched a self help effort they called Project Life, short for Leavenworth Improvement For Everyone, and hit upon a bold idea, to remake the whole downtown as a Bavarian alpine village, playing off the mountain scenery. The gamble worked spectacularly. Today the mock German town draws millions of visitors a year.
Between the drowned railroad grades, the ghost towns, and this improbable Bavarian village, the road over Stevens Pass is a lesson in how mountains shape human fortune.
