When you drive alongside Interstate 90 by way of Issaquah, Washington, you would possibly spot a curious sight simply off the street: an enthralling Alpine chalet. It seems to be as if a slice of Switzerland was tucked into the Pacific Northwest. And in a manner, it was. This chocolate manufacturing unit was the creation of Julius Boehm, an immigrant sweet maker, and mountaineer. Central to this legacy are the Boehm’s Candies Edelweiss Chalet, his Swiss-style chocolate store, and the Alpine Chapel he constructed as a memorial to fallen mountaineers.

Julius Boehm was born in 1897 in Vienna, Austria, from a younger age he displayed a curiosity for the outside. In his youth Boehm turned a talented athlete and mountaineer, roaming the Alps of Austria and Switzerland. He even discovered his manner onto the Austrian Olympic monitor staff, within the 1924 Paris Olympics, Boehm ran the 440-yard relay. In 1936, Boehm earned the distinction of being a torchbearer for the Berlin Olympics, carrying the Olympic flame on its ultimate stretch by way of Austria earlier than it crossed into Czechoslovakia.

When Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Boehm, who was of Jewish heritage, discovered himself in peril. In early 1940, confronted with conscription into the German military, he made an escape, reportedly snowboarding by evening throughout the Silvretta mountain vary into Switzerland with little greater than a backpack and a pair of. He was 42 years previous, and he left behind the whole lot he knew. A month later, in 1940, Boehm arrived in the US as a battle refugee.

Throughout World Conflict II, Boehm discovered a technique to serve his new nation utilizing his alpine expertise: he taught snowboarding and mountaineering to U.S. troops (particularly Coast Guard members) at Washington’s Stevens Cross and Mt. Rainier, serving to troopers prepare for winter warfare.

How did a former Olympic athlete and alpine adventurer find yourself within the chocolate enterprise? In Boehm’s case, his maternal grandfather had been a pastry and sweet maker in Switzerland, and Julius grew up with an appreciation for confections. After the battle, Boehm wanted a technique to help himself in America. In 1942, alongside a enterprise companion named George Tedlock, he determined to show his candy tooth right into a livelihood. That yr they opened Boehm’s Sweet Kitchen, a chocolate store at 559 Ravenna Boulevard in Seattle. Boehm initially made candies by hand in small batches, fantastic European-style treats utilizing recipes handed down from his household and new creations of his personal. He was a perfectionist with substances, insisting on utilizing genuine Swiss chocolate, actual cream and butter, and no shortcuts in his strategies.

By the early Fifties, his love of nature pulled him additional towards the mountains. He usually drove out of the town to Issaquah, then a small city on the foot of the Cascades, to go mountaineering or snowboarding. The Issaquah space’s alpine surroundings reminded him of Austria and Switzerland, and he dreamed of constructing one thing there. In 1954, Julius took the leap and bought a 3-acre property in Issaquah with an eye fixed towards increasing his sweet operation and creating a private alpine haven. On the time, Issaquah was a rural group of farms and forests, which was an unconventional place to construct a chocolate manufacturing unit.

In 1956, Boehm fulfilled his imaginative and prescient by opening a second retailer and manufacturing facility for Boehm’s Candies in Issaquah, on the Sundown Freeway (now Gilman Boulevard). He designed the constructing as an “Edelweiss Chalet”, modeled after the Swiss and Austrian chalets of his youth. When it was completed, the Issaquah retailer had the excellence of being the primary Alpine chalet ever constructed within the Pacific Northwest.

Boehm stuffed the place with artwork and memorabilia celebrating mountain tradition: there have been woodcarvings, bronze sculptures, climbing gear, and work of well-known peaks. He even saved a kennel of St. Bernard canines on the grounds, traditional Alpine rescue canines. Boehm himself lived in an residence above the store (full with its personal kitchen for experimenting with recipes), so the chalet actually turned his dwelling in addition to his enterprise.

Households would cease by to look at candymakers hand-dipping truffles by way of the kitchen window, or to wander the fantastically landscaped grounds, which Julius adorned with fountains, alpine flower gardens, and statues.

One among Julius Boehm’s most enduring contributions to Issaquah sits just some steps from his chalet: a tiny white Alpine chapel. This quaint chapel, wanting prefer it was plucked from a distant Swiss village, was Boehm’s dream challenge in his later years. By the Seventies, Boehm was in his 80s however nonetheless climbing mountains, operating every day, and making sweet. Boehm wished to honor his lifelong love of mountaineering and pay tribute to associates and fellow climbers who had handed away. In 1978, at age 81, he launched into constructing a “Excessive Alpine Chapel” on the chalet grounds as a memorial to mountaineers who perished within the mountains.

Boehm commissioned the chapel to be an actual duplicate of a Twelfth-century Swiss chapel that held particular that means to him: the chapel of Ilse Maria, a tiny village close to St. Moritz within the Swiss Alps. It was close to the area the place his mom was born, which gave it private resonance. The ensuing construction, accomplished in 1981, is a stone-and-stucco chapel with a small bell tower and picket door.

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