Welcome to Leavenworth, Washington, the Christmas capital of the Pacific Northwest. Decades ago, Leavenworth was a near ghost town on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains, one of the region's poorest communities. The mines and the sawmill had closed ...

Leavenworth was a near ghost town on the eastern slopes of the Cascade Mountains, with abandoned mines and abandoned dreams. Then, desperate business owners made a far-fetched pitch.

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