By Suzanne Waring
There it is; the city’s beautifully decorated Christmas tree. It appears magically each year just before Thanksgiving, seemingly with no effort. However, if the stories of providing an official decorated Christmas tree in other Montana cities and towns match anything like those of providing one for Great Falls, we know that sometimes it isn’t so easy.
Ideally the tree has to be thirty to thirty-five feet in height, perfectly symmetrical, dense, and with only one pointed top to be the official tree. An official Christmas tree has become an important tradition in Great Falls, starting in 1915.
That first municipal (as it was called then) tree was erected on Third Street North, a block off Central Avenue near the trolley stop and the post office. It was lit on Christmas Eve. The campfire girls were the organizers, but many businesses and individuals helped.
The lighted tree with colored bulbs and a green light at the top had strings of lights from its top to street corners. The wind was blowing so harshly (part of the tradition!) that the program to light the tree couldn’t be completed, but in spite of the howling tempest, a thousand or so individuals stopped by to see the tree sometime during the evening.
In 1937, the Merchants Association placed seven lighted, forty-foot trees in the intersections of Central Avenue from Park Street Drive to Seventh Street around Thanksgiving. When the trees were removed the first Sunday of January without also removing the Christmas tree stands until five days later, at least three people were injured because of the protruding stands. That may have been the first year that decorated trees were seen on the streets or sidewalks beginning around Thanksgiving so that Christmas shoppers could enjoy them.
A large tree with lights located in front of the Civic Center had become a tradition by 1962. The next year the tree, a seventy-foot Engelman spruce, was cut in the King’s Hill area by a logging crew and transported by airmen from Malmstrom Air Force Base.
Cutting the tree in the Highwood Mountains in 1967 produced quite a bit of excitement for miliary personnel. When a logging crew felled the tree, it went in the wrong direction and split. The tree pulled one of the airmen down the mountain on the end of a rope that was attached to the tree and narrowly missed another airman. Next a 50-foot tree, but still symmetrical, was felled. It took two days to transport it out of the woods. The road was so narrow that it took a tractor to swing the flatbed trailer around sharp curves. Once it arrived, the tree remained on the flatbed trailer several days until the crane that was to be used for erecting it was repaired.
Perhaps this experience motivated those who were responsible for procuring the tree to make a change. At least by 1970, the official tree was cut from someone’s front yard within the city.
Finding an official tree in 2008 was a challenge. The tree that year was extremely dense and wouldn’t lay down on the trailer. It took up the whole street as it was being moved from a residential neighborhood to the Civic Center. Then it took three extra hours to erect it.
By 2017, the city felt they could not budget the entire responsibility of having a tree. The Downtown Great Falls Association stepped in to become responsible for selecting the tree, cutting it down, moving it, and erecting it in front of the Civic Center. Northwest Energy has continued to make certain the path the tree travels is safe from catching on utility lines. The city said they would take over by trimming the tree with close to 2,000 lights. To prevent the tree from being blown over, the trunk is placed three to four feet into the ground. City employees continue to take responsibility for dismantling and disposing of the tree after the holidays.
In 2020 the tree was beautiful, but because of COVID the lighting ceremony was canceled. Instead, Santa made a special trip in his horse-drawn carriage to light the tree.
The 2022 tree took honors as being almost as challenging as the one in 1967. Once it was cut down, it was discovered that the tree was very dry and did not do well during transport. Great Falls City Chief Forester, Todd Seymanski, said that when the tree was laid onto the trailer, many of the branches along a wide flank of the tree broke off. Finally, after the tree was erected at the Civic Center, it was decided that the tree was not safe for city employees to trim with lights and might be a hazard to passers-by. Volunteers had to start cutting it down limb by limb.
Fortunately, a back-up tree was waiting in someone’s yard. Another problem that year was the freezing weather. The plastic-coated Christmas lights strings became brittle in the single-digit temperatures, but at the last moment the weather warmed up so that workers could string the lights.
Every year the Downtown Great Falls Association receives offers from residents who want to volunteer their tree. People plant little two- and three-foot spruce trees and 40 years later, they can’t see out of their houses. Having the tree removed is a cost-savings way to remove a tree while also serving a worthy cause.
This year the official Christmas tree will be in placed in front of the Great Falls’ Civic Center in time for the Parade of Lights on November 30. We hope that this year’s tree is erected with ease, but then that doesn’t make for a good story! MSN
