A Leavenworth Washington Christmas with the light the snow – is the way to go. Leavenworth Washington is one of the best places to visit in the USA for Christmas! For three weekends leading up to Christmas, the village is illuminated with more than half a million lights and also features carolers and holiday concerts, sledding and sleigh rides, a Christkindlmarkt and visits from St. Nickolaus. There’s also a Leavenworth Nutcracker Museum, which features more than 5,000 objects.
Leavenworth Washington Christmas: Timber Forms Leavenworth
The construction of the Great Northern Railway through the Tumwater Canyon in 1892 brought settlers to a townsite that was named “Leavenworth”. Lafayette Lamb arrived in 1903 from Clinton, Iowa, to build the second largest sawmill in Washington state.

Leavenworth Washington Christmas: Overview
Leavenworth Washington Christmas: City Is Incorporated
Leavenworth was officially incorporated on September 5, 1906. A small timber community, it became a regional office of the Great Northern Railway in the early 1900s. The railroad relocated to Wenatchee in 1925, greatly affecting Leavenworth’s economy. The city’s population declined well into the 1950s as the lumber mills closed and stores relocated.
The City – Turns to Tourism
The city looked to tourism and recreation as a major economy as early as 1929, when they opened a ski jump. In 1962, the Project LIFE (Leavenworth Improvement For Everyone) Committee was formed in partnership with the University of Washington to investigate strategies to revitalize the struggling logging town.
The theme town idea was created by two Seattle businessmen, Ted Price and Bob Rodgers, who had bought a failing cafe on Highway 2 in 1960. Price was chair of the Project LIFE tourism subcommittee, and in 1965 the pair led a trip to a Danish-themed town, Solvang, California, to build support for the idea. The first building to be remodeled in the Bavarian style was the Chikamin Hotel, which owner LaVerne Peterson renamed the Edelweiss after the state flower of Bavaria.

Leavenworth Washington Christmas: Geography
Leavenworth sits on the southeast side of the North Cascades collage, which is a group of terranes that accreted to North America all about the same time. Marine fossils indicate that the terranes were probably a group of islands originating in the South Pacific hundreds of million years ago.
The terranes arrived at North America about 90 million years ago in the middle of the Cretaceous period. When they smashed into their new home, they were a puzzle of north–south slices. As accretion continued, they were cut into horizontal (east-west) slices.
During the Eocene epoch, about 50 million years ago, the area was once again cut into vertical slices, creating among others, the Leavenworth fault and the Entiat fault. In between these two faults the Chiwaukum graben was created. This graben is about 12 miles wide and trends northwest from Wenatchee for about 50 miles. As the graben dropped, it began to fill with clastic sediment from the surrounding hills, creating the Chumstick formation.
About 30 million years ago in the Oligocene epoch, the Chiwaukum graben underwent compressional deformation creating several folds in the region that are visible today. Leavenworth is on the western edge of the graben; in fact, the Leavenworth fault runs through the western edge of town. The area to the west and southwest of Leavenworth was created in the middle Cretaceous period with the uplift of the Mount Stuart batholith, forming the granite rock seen today in Icicle Ridge and Tumwater Mountain.
During the Pleistocene and into the Holocene epochs, an alpine glacier originating from the southwest in the Mount Stuart range made its way to where the town is today. Leavenworth sits on the terminal moraine of that glacier. The residential parts of town display many glacial erratics that originated 20 miles up the Icicle Valley near Mount Stuart.
About 19,000 years ago, a large rockslide dammed the Columbia River near Rock Island, just south of Wenatchee. The temporary dam, in conjunction with one of the Lake Missoula floods, caused the water to flow back up the Wenatchee Valley, where it was stopped by the glacier at Leavenworth.
As the leading edge of the glacier interacted with the flood, ice rafts formed carrying granite erratics from the Stuart batholith, which ended up in the town of Dryden about 15 miles down the valley from Leavenworth. As the glacier retreated, the south side of Leavenworth was a lake dammed up by the moraine. The bridge on the east side of town is a good vantage point to see where the Wenatchee River cuts through the moraine today.
For More Information About a Christmas in Leavenworth – Check out these Links…
Village of Lights: Christmastown – Leavenworth Washington
10 Tips for Christmas in Leavenworth, Washington to Have the Most Magical Time – Uprooted Traveler
How to Spend a Magical Christmas in Leavenworth – Oceanus Adventure