WASHINGTON IS spotted with small towns that seem to pop up and fade away along small stretches of highway, places no bigger than one song on the radio, about as far and wide as the time it takes to slow down for a stoplight and speed back up to 70 miles per hour. Brewster, Carnation, Dayton, Sultan. Colville, likewise, is the sort of charming country town that boasts just over 5,000 residents, most of whom work in businesses perched alongside Washington State Highway 395, which also serves as part of Main Street. It's an Everyman's place, where lumber trucks filled high with freshly cut ponderosa pines trundle through town and share the road with soccer moms in minivans ferrying children to church and school events. Far enough north that the local service station kindly requests that customers not use Canadian cash to pay for their gas, Colville is an outdoorsman's paradise. The Chamber of Commerce markets the city as a destination where "deer wander through the streets downtown and people stop for families of quail crossing Highway 20; where eagles and osprey are frequently spotted soaring in the skies above; where horse enthusiasts can ride for days on public land. A place where wild turkeys are as likely to visit the bird feeder as songbirds."

But Colville, the county seat of Stevens County, is no rugged outpost. Quietly, without much notice or outside help, the city has built a solid industrial base that produces several hundred million dollars a year in durable goods. Add in a new wave of service companies moving into the area to reap the benefits of its inexpensive labor and available land, and Colville is poised to become one of the best small towns in Washington.

CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY

Dan Henry grew up dreaming about inventions. "I read the biographies of Thomas Edison and Wilbur Wright; always knew I wanted to be an inventor," says the cofounder of Colville-based Hearth and Home Technologies Inc., the world's largest fireplace manufacturer. A machinist by training, Henry had also learned to fly planes, assuming that one day he would work for his father in one of several fire bombers converted from World War II fighter planes in Carson City, Nev. But in 1974, the elder Henry sold the company and moved up to Stevens County. He had bought 40 acres of land and dubbed it Our Place, inviting any and all family members to come north and build a homestead. So in 1976, thinking he might be able to make a better life, the younger Henry flew himself and his pregnant wife up to what his father had promised was as close to "God's Country" as possible.

From the company headquarters' now sprawling manufacturing facility just off Highway 395, Henry explains how he had built two wood-burning stoves for his dad and uncle and shipped them up to Colville from Nevada. "This was following the oil embargo of 1972 and '73, which jump-started the return to wood burning stoves," he says. "Alan Trusler, who married my cousin, came for a visit one summer and thought this was the most incredible place." Together the two formed Aladdin Steel Products in 1979. While Henry proved himself a genius in creating new products, Trusler successfully steered the marketing and finances of the company as its president. "By 1984 we had 18 dealers in Oregon, Washington, Idaho."

The big turn came when Oregon decreed that all wood-burning stoves had to fall within certain emission limits by 1986. The following year, Spokane followed suit. There were two primary routes to obtaining the requisite clean air certifications. One was through the use of a catalytic converter, and the other was adopted by Henry: the Quadra- Burn system that eschews the catalytic system in favor of a multichambered hearth that burns and reburns gases and smoke up to four times. Aladdin Steel, which was later renamed Hearth and Home, had essentially revolutionized the industry by permitting safe gas fireplace installation almost anywhere in the home.