(24 Dec 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Leavenworth, Washington – 29 November 2024
1. Various of Leavenworth with crowds and showing Bavarian style buildings
2. UPSOUND (English) Matt Cade, resident showing picture on poster:
"It was the first building in 1965 that got transformed."
3. Various of Leavenworth with crowds and showing Bavarian style buildings
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Matt Cade, Leavenworth resident:
"They initially called it Project Alpine because everybody understood the Alpine theme was more Swiss."
5. Various of Leavenworth and crowds
6. SOUNDBITE (English) Matt Cade, Leavenworth resident:
"If a commercial building now is remodeled and it’s not Bavarian, it’s going Bavarian. Any new structure is going Bavarian and they are very authentic, these folks in the building code, everything that you see in town currently today will be remodeled and conform to, has to be from a style in Bavaria."
7. Aerial of Leavenworth ++MUTED++
8. History book
9. Display at museum
10. SOUNDBITE (English) Matt Cade, Leavenworth resident:
"By 1930, with the sawmill gone and the railroad leaving in 1928, then we ended up really going from about 6000 people all the way down to about 1800 people. So it was a classic boom and bust town."
11. Various of Leavenworth at night
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Leavenworth, Washington – 30 November 2024
12. SOUNDBITE (English) Ann Peavey, Leavenworth resident:
"The chamber came up with the idea of Christmas Town and having the lights on all the time starting in Thanksgiving and then running all the way through the beginning of the year and now all the way to the end of February. And so it has reduced the crush a little bit. It’s hard to tell in December."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Leavenworth, Washington – 29 November 2024
13. Various of Leavenworth at night
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Matt Cade, Leavenworth resident:
"Currently this last year, which would have been 2023, finished off with 3 million visitors a year. So it has gone…You could say 50% in the past four years."
15. Various of cars going to Leavenworth, kids and Christmas stores
16. SOUNDBITE (English) Matt Cade, Leavenworth resident:
"You could say this town was lucky. But that’s what they say about luck is opportunity meeting up with preparation. You have to prepare yourself to be lucky. These folks were prepared to do the commitment to do what it took to create this Bavarian experience."
17. Leavenworth at night
STORYLINE:
Freshly baked pretzels, shining tree lights and sleds in the snow lend a ruddy warmth to an unlikely collection of Bavarian-themed chalets in the mountains of Washington state.
Decades ago, the town of Leavenworth was a near ghost town, one of the poorest parts of the Pacific Northwest.
The mines and the sawmill had closed, and even the railroad left.
“We ended up really going from about 6000 people all the way down to about 1800 people. So it was a classic boom and bust town," said Matt Cade, president of Greater Leavenworth Museum.
That’s when desperate business owners took a serious gamble — reinventing the community in the vision of an alpine village.
Leavenworth changed its building code to require all newly built or remodeled commercial properties take on a Bavarian style. And the town council keeps the Christmas lights on from Thanksgiving through February.
More than half a century later, the result brings tourists from near and far — especially during the holidays, when Leavenworth takes on the flavor of a German Christmas market.
According to Cade, in 2023 around 3 million people visited the town.
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News post in December 29, 2024, 6:04 am.
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