Leavenworth, Washington (AP) The smell of bratwurst and pretzels wafted through the air as horses trotted down the main street pulling a carriage of sightseers. Sitting on her mother’s lap, a girl tried to touch the glass of a shop window, looking at the sequined reindeer behind the glass, while multicolored ornaments spun around.
This is Leavenworth, Washington – the Christmas town of the Pacific Northwest.
It has been only several decades ago that Leavenworth was a nearly deserted town at the eastern base of the Cascade Mountains, one of the most impoverished areas in the region. The mines and the sawmill had shut down and the railroad too had disappeared. In the 1960s, owners were under tremendous pressure to make a big risk. Having received no aid from the state or the federal government, they started borrowing money and revamping the downtown area in the manner of a Bavarian town.
Some 50 years later, the result is more than 3 million visitors a year, year-round, whether hiking and skiing or white-water rafting and fly fishing or shopping and simply taking a day trip from Seattle, Cade, the president of the Greater Leavenworth Museum, says. The presence of the crush has raised questions about the ability to pay for housing, and recent efforts, such as some state funding for affordable apartments, have been directed toward making sure that the employees in the tourism industry can live in town.
However, the town receives its highest patronage during the festive season.
In December, it transforms into a German Christmas market with the enchantment of choirs, carol singers, food stalls and gingerbread baking competition. The tradition to turn on the Christmas lights in the downtown on Saturday and Sunday evening became so popular that people gather in large numbers and so it was decided to keep the lights on from Thanksgiving to February.
“Every time I go there, I just feel joy and excitement,” said Alison Epsom, of Sultan, who visited with her husband, Brian Jolly, and their 8-month-old daughter, Acacia.
The couple has been together for almost two decades and they first crossed path during the international dance festival. On one of their first meetings, Jolly invited Epsom, who was born in England, to come to Leavenworth.
“I knew I had one opportunity that she was going to be here and I wanted her to fall in love with me,” he said.
On their way they got to the mountain pass; she ordered him to stop the car. She ran outside without a coat and made a snowman that was about this big.
“I had never seen that much snow,” Epsom said. “So that was absolutely magical to me,” she said.
They have been coming back to Leavenworth every year and every year they go, they always buy an ornament for their Christmas tree from the Kris Kringl store in town. The town is a very important setting in the couple’s love story. Jolly even asked her for marriage on a horse drawn sleigh.
This year, the parents thought it was their daughter’s turn to choose the new ornament and whoever touched the ornament first was to be bought by the parents. She reached for a white owl, which now swings from the family Christmas tree, close to the red and gold glittery star Epsom chose on the first visit.
