Condos on Wisconsin Street

A great tragedy of the American West is the automobile’s destruction of nearly all the small towns, bringing ugly and sprawl in equal measures. The only towns that seem to have escaped it are those that never grew much, like Index and Union Gap, Washington.

Yesterday, I visited another great small town, this one with a fantastic town square, Tieton. I forgot my camera, but this photo says it all:

A single ring of commercial buildings surrounding a central park, surrounded by a handful of homes and warehouses, and not much else. In this small town, Ed Marquand and Michael Longyear are building Mighty Tieton, an artists’ community with galleries, condos, and a common gathering hall. The old apple warehouse is large enough to shoot a film in, the surrounding countryside inspiring, and the sun shines nearly every day of the year. Will they succeed? Who knows. But I love their ambition.