A Fine Day For Lederhosen

Q. How did Leavenworth get to be this way?

Back in the railroad's heyday of the late 19th century, foreigners were often imported and employed to lay trackage. It was not unusual for entire villages to be shipped across the ocean. Here in the West, it was largely Chinese workers who were exploited, while back East, it was largely Europeans.

Leavenworth's exception to this rule was the result of international politics happening across the ocean. In Europe, "Iron Chancellor" Otto Von Bismarck was busy transforming the face of Germany. Having little taste for strong, central control, he sold off portions the nation in order to amass wealth for his nation-building activities. Downtown Bavaria, "a vast cultural wasteland" according to Bismarck, was sold wholesale to the United States in 1873. It was unloaded off ships and put in railcars without so much as repacking it for the next leg of the trip. At the time, North Dakota was shopping around for a state capitol so it bought the naming rights to the town. With the name, they got the rest of Bavaria. Unfortunately for North Dakota, the Bavarian shipment did not include its mountains. The shrewd Chancellor Bismarck cleverly omitted them from the deal. Thus Bavaria was put into cold storage for a over a decade until a new place could be found for it.

Eventually, lawmakers decided to install it in Washington Territory. With it's requisite mountains, it seemed "as good a place as any other" for it. In fact, national lawmakers, tired of paying storage costs, made Bavarian installation a requirement for Washington's statehood. Starting in the late 1880s, Bavaria was imported into the Cascades as the Great Northern Railroad pushed westward through the territory.

Q. Great Northern? Say, isn't the railroad's logo a goat?

Indeed it is! In fact, the trains were referred to as "iron goats" for the sure-footed way they climbed up and over the steep Cascades. Today, there is even an Iron Goat Trail for your hiking pleasure. The Wellington disaster of 1910, in which an avalanche buried 96 people (officially, anyway, the real toll was likely higher), occurred here. The town was eventually renamed before disappearing quietly, buried in infamy. These days, its ghosts speak only to the hikers.

Back to Leavenworth, though, the iron of the iron goats is obviously a coded tribute to the Iron Chancellor himself.

Q. Aside from tourism, what makes Leavenworth tick?

Once installed, the area flourished, of course, thanks largely to the railroad. A roundhouse, switch yard, and divisional headquarters were constructed in town. Lumber mills sprouted up and there was fertile farmland nearby. With these resources, Leavenworth eventually became an exporter of premium meats and cheeses. To this day, though, its primary export remains authentic German culture, even to Germany. More on this later.

Q. What's with the weird writing? Those aren't McDonald's, Subway's, and Union 76's real logos, are they?

In addition to the above-mentioned industries, Leavenworth also developed more esoteric exports. The Leavenworth College of Calligraphic and Typographic Arts was founded here in 1893, owing in large part to that era's booming economic fortunes. Offering degrees in both typography and typonomy, it eventually gained additional notoriety for its theoretically-rigorous textile arts, when it simply shortened its name to Leavenworth College. It quickly became the pre-eminent incubator of corporate logos and uniforms for not only the nation, but for the whole world. In fact, many of today's well known brands --McDonalds, Subway, and Wells Fargo, for example-- hatched their identities here.

Not all of them made it to the world at large, however. Unfortunately, many of these logos were simply too avant-garde at the time for the average American. While unfathomable in today's enlightened times, Americans at that time feared what they perceived as a growing foreign influence and infiltration of American culture. The logos, developed by students under the watchful guidance of Bavarian typonomers, seemed un-American. Quite simply, although they would play in Leavenworth, they simply would not "play in Peoria". By and large, the "wild west font" was the favorite of the day, despite the College's best experimental efforts to introduce diversity into the graphical lexicon.

Staring in the 1920s, the College's influence evaporated as people started flocking to a more "international" and "modern" style. It was the Jazz Age and there was no jazz in Leavenworth, only oom-pah. Given the completion of the Great Northern, people started flocking to Seattle while Leavenworth became another in long chain of small-town stops along the way. Furthermore, the unfair public perception of the College as un-American further undermined the school as the styles of prominent Americans like Mies van der Rohe and Wally Gropius grew in stature.

Fortunately, however, we can still see some of the original logos and design work today, preserved throughout the town.

Q. Sounds like that was a bad time for Leavenworth.

Sure was. Compounding matters, the railroad pulled out of town in 1922, moving the roundhouse and headquarters to Wenatchee. At this time, Owen Edgar Chumstick --a boulder merchant who owned land in a nearby valley but frequented Leavenworth's finest businesses and participated in civic matters-- fiercely betrayed the town and, thus, gave meaning to his now-infamous moniker. Due to his wealth and political influence, he convinced the Great Northern to re-route the railroad mainline through new tunnels and an allegedly safer valley. As it turned it, this route ran conveniently through Chumstick's valley.

To this day, the word chumstick is a term of derision. It describes a calculating and duplicitous person, one who pretends to be a friend ("chum") but is ready to whack your knees out from under you ("stick") when you are not looking. This betrayal has remained a sore point with many old-time locals such that they have blocked it out of their minds. Out of embarrassment, they won't even acknowledge it. It's best not to bring it up.

With that, Leavenworth entered into the slow simmer of dormancy.

Q. It certainly doesn't look like Leavenworth is hurting today.

Thank Dwight D. Eisenhower, Allied bombing, and the culturally-adventurous 1950s for that. Allied bombing campaigns during the war --World War II the Big One-- left Germany in smoldering ruin. Nearly all semblance of proud German culture had been reduced to rubble and cinders. As a result, ordinary German people during the 1950s began clamoring for artifacts of their lost heritage.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, President Eisenhower was building a thoroughly efficient transportation network based on the desire of Americans to not experience any of the areas through which they drove as well as, more importantly, the expedient transport of freight by truck. "I'll be damned if I must surrender to those rail-based chumsticks," he famously said in a candid Oval Office conversation.

Realizing just how much of their culture had been ravaged by both bombs and the red thumb of Soviet Communism, German cultural komissars noted with alarming immediacy the need to remanufacture their lost identity. Naturally, they turned to their long-time friends, the Americans, for help.

Were it not for Eisenhower and his big hurry to move goods expediently, Germany's dearth of culture and America's vast abundance of it would have merely been a luxury liner and U-boat passing in the night. In October 1964, German Kulturminister, Klaus Meine, and his Deputy Vicekomissar, Rudolph Schenker, toured the States seeking culture. Since President Dwight was eager to show of his new roads, Meine and Schenker were directed to the Interstates. Yet like many Germans, they preferred the scenic backroads rather than the speedy, dull highway. So as they made their way to the Pacific Northwest, they decided to turn off the Interstate. They piloted their rented Volvo down Highway 2. This road, and destiny, led them to Leavenworth.

Q. Hold on! So German culture as we know it today was re-seeded from a small town in rural Washington???

Well, there was plenty to go around. Leavenworth simply had too much of it to be sustainable. During it's golden age, Leavenworth was expanding so much that it firmly annexed a nearby town (populated primarily by Czechs). There was enough to sell back to Germany and still revitalize the town as a tourist destination. Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

Q. I'm more of a winter sport type myself. If I wait until winter, will there be stuff for me to do?

Absolutely. Leavenworth is as gorgeous in the winter as it is in the summer. Please be aware, however, that Leavenworth possesses a more traditional European sensibility. Whether you will be tobaggoning, skiing, or even ski-jumping, please be aware that Leavenworth enforce strict separation of sexes. Additionally, whether you are hitting the slopes or sipping some wine in one of its fine eateries, proper attire is always the rule.

Q. So international! Do I need a passport to get into Leavenworth?

Carrying your passport is always a good idea. It is a stylish document possessing a highly sophisticated form factor. When you take your passport out of your suit-jacket pocket, everybody around you knows that you are no hoi-polloi; you are a well-versed traveler. Additionally, it may have interesting and diverse stamps and markings from all over the world. Nothing celebrates chic international bureaucracy like a passport. Compared to the boring form factor, and lack of cover, of the driver's license, the passport shines.

Q. OK. Will my American money be accepted in Leavenworth?

Yes, most every business establishment and eatery will take your dollars without any special surcharges or processing fees. Be aware, however, of the exchange rate. As of this writing, the Leavenworth dollar was worth approximately 1.05 Canadian dollars.