Cashmere is a small city in Chelan County, in central Washington, set along the Wenatchee River within the Wenatchee Valley. It lies roughly ten miles west of Wenatchee, the region's principal city, and is part of the Wenatchee–East Wenatchee metropolitan area. U.S. Route 2, a major east-west corridor across the Cascade Range, passes through town. The community's economy has long been tied to fruit. The Wenatchee Valley is one of the nation's premier apple-growing regions, and orchards of apples, pears, and cherries ring Cashmere on all sides. In 1918, two Armenian immigrants, Mark Balaban and Armen Tertsagian, founded Liberty Orchards as a way to make use of surplus fruit, developing the Aplets & Cotlets candies that made the town nationally known. The candy company remains one of Cashmere's signature institutions, and its country store and factory draw visitors from across the state. Cashmere also preserves its frontier past. The Cashmere Museum and Pioneer Village includes a collection of roughly twenty pioneer-era structures, offering a picture of nineteenth-century life in the valley. The town was incorporated in 1904, and its compact downtown still reflects its early twentieth-century character. The surrounding orchards and the river have long defined the local landscape, shaping both the town's economy and its identity. Today Cashmere functions as a small, orchard-centered community that also serves as a gateway to the Cascade Range. Its location along Highway 2 puts the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, the Icicle Creek corridor, and the Wenatchee River within easy reach, while Wenatchee supplies the larger employment, shopping, and airport amenities of the region. The town's dry, sunny climate and its position between river, orchards, and mountains give it a character distinct within the broader valley.