Manson, Washington — Town That Had to Move Uphill

Manson's waterfront is one of its attractions now. A century ago, rising water forced part of the community to get out of the way.

The lake country had supported Chelan people for generations before non-Native settlement. During the transition into irrigated agriculture, Wapato John became an important farmer and rancher in the Manson area. Orchards later spread across the benches as irrigation made commercial fruit growing increasingly practical.

Then the modern Lake Chelan dam raised the lake roughly twenty-one feet in the 1920s. Low-lying parts of the townsite and orchard land went under. Buildings were moved and streets reestablished on higher ground.

The fruit economy survived the relocation. Vineyards, tasting rooms and tourism later joined it, drawing visitors to the same lake that once rearranged the town.

Manson did not merely grow beside Lake Chelan. It had to renegotiate the relationship.