Washington Cascades - Washington, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest - page 321

Winthrop & Around
Winthrop (population 397) is - along with Leavenworth - one of two themed towns on
the popular Cascade Loop. Once a struggling mining community, it avoided 'ghost town'
status in the 1960s when it was made over to look like a cowboy settlement out of the
Wild West. Though on paper it sounds more Hollywood back lot than Gunfight at the OK
Corral, the Gary Cooper touches are surprisingly authentic. Winthrop's High Noon shop-
fronts hide a genuine frontier spirit (the road ends in winter not far beyond here) and
some fantastic eating places and accommodations.
The area's first European settler was Harvard-educated Guy Waring, who in 1891 built
a trading post at the confluence of the Chewuch ( chee -wok) and Methow Rivers. When
the mining business dried up after 1915, Winthrop teetered catastrophically on the brink
of extinction, until Robert Jorgenson, the architect who had redesigned Leavenworth,
stepped forward with his false-fronted shops and cowboy memorabilia.
Winthrop's renaissance coincided with the opening in 1972 of the North Cascades
Hwy, which brought in a flood of new visitors. When the highway closes in winter, Win-
throp becomes the Methow's cross-country-skiing HQ.
Sights
Winthrop's photogenic core is compact and cheery, with plenty of gift shops, coffee bars
and a decent bookstore.
Shafer Museum MUSEUM
( www.shafermuseum.com ; 285 Castle Ave; admission by donation; 10am-5pm Memorial Day-
Labor Day) It's hard to differentiate the reconstructed buildings in the museum from the
rest of Winthrop, such is the town's eerie authenticity. However, the museum does retain
one original construction: a log cabin known as 'the Castle,' built by Winthrop founder
Guy Waring in 1896 as a present to his wife.
North Cascade Smokejumper Base MUSEUM
(23 Intercity Airport Rd; 8am-5pm Jun-Oct) Smokejumping is a method of fire-
fighting that involves parachuting out of a plane into a rural area to tackle a forest fire
before it gets out of control. It's hard to avoid feeling humbled by the heroic exploits of
the people who have been trained to do it. The Methow Valley is often seen as the birth-
place of modern smokejumping (which was pioneered in the 1930s); you can tour the
base, halfway between Winthrop and Twisp.