Surprisingly charmed by a town’s invented theme

I went to Leavenworth, Washington, expecting to dislike the place, and possibly even to detest it.

I was instead rather charmed.

Leavenworth, which is in Central Washington about 22 miles west of Wenatchee, is an example of the “themed town.”

Some of these locales can claim a certain level of authenticity.

Tombstone, Arizona, for instance, comes by its Old West theme honestly. And a town my family visited a couple days after we left Leavenworth — Poulsbo, Washington, across Puget Sound from Seattle — brandishes the Scandinavian heritage of many of its settlers with considerable panache.

But Leavenworth’s shtick, as it were, is wholly invented.

It mimics a village in the Bavarian Alps, something Leavenworth obviously is not, and never was, what with most of North America and the Atlantic Ocean being in the way.

As I looked forward to my first trip to Leavenworth I was perhaps especially sensitive to its ersatz nature because it happens that I have visited the actual Bavarian Alps, and while there, in the summer of 1986, I strolled the streets of several villages.

And so I prepared myself to dismiss, with the smug disdain of a world traveler, the kitsch I was sure to find in Leavenworth — the shot

Article source: http://www.bakercityherald.com/opinion/6164667-151/surprisingly-charmed-by-a-towns-invented-theme