In 1962, Leavenworth, Washington was dying.
The sawmills were closing.
The railroad was rerouting.
The mines were emptying.
Another resource town destined to become a ghost town.
Except it didn’t.
A Different Question
Instead, someone asked a different question:
“What if we didn’t try to save what we had, but created something entirely new?”
The town leaders looked at their assets:
Mountains.
Snow.
No To Status Quo
A setting that could remind someone of somewhere else.
They didn’t ask
“How do we save the mining industry?”
They asked “What could this become?”
The answer was Bavaria.
They didn’t just put up a few decorations.
They went all in.
They rewrote building codes to require Bavarian architectural styles.
They trained their service workers in Bavarian customs.
They created festivals, celebrations, and experiences
that transported visitors to
a slice of Germany
in the Cascade Mountains.
Today
Leavenworth welcomes more than a million visitors annually.
The town that was dying now has a problem with too many tourists.
Here’s what they understood:
Sometimes salvation doesn’t come from preserving what you have,
but from imagining what you could become.
They also understood that halfway measures don’t work.
You can’t be sort of Bavarian.
You can’t kind of commit to transformation.
The magic happens when you go all in.
Most importantly
they grasped that authenticity isn’t about historical accuracy
it’s about commitment to a vision.
Leavenworth isn’t trying to be the “real” Bavaria.
It’s creating its own authentic experience,
one that delivers on the promise it makes to visitors.
The next time you’re facing obsolescence
personal
professional
organizational
remember Leavenworth.
The question isn’t “How do we save what we have?”
It’s “What could we become?”
And then, go all in.
