Tumwater Canyon: The Drive That Sets the Stage
Near Leavenworth, Washington
The western approach to Leavenworth follows United States Highway Two through Tumwater Canyon, one of the most dramatic river gorges in the eastern Cascades. The Wenatchee River runs fast and green through a tight canyon of basalt and granite, dropping over boulders and through slots of white water that draw kayakers at certain water levels. The canyon walls rise hundreds of feet on either side, forested to the ridgeline.
In October the bigleaf maples that line the lower slopes turn yellow and orange, and the canyon becomes a corridor of autumn color. The name Tumwater is said to come from Chinook jargon, meaning waterfall or falling water. When the Great Northern Railway pushed its tracks through this canyon in the eighteen nineties, the work required cutting and blasting a roadbed out of the canyon walls, serious engineering in an era of hand labor and black powder.
The canyon is one of the reasons the Bavarian theme has always made a certain intuitive sense to visitors. You drive through a steep forested gorge flanked by snowy peaks, and then you arrive in a town that looks like it belongs in the Alps. The landscape does the setup, and Leavenworth delivers the punchline.
