Montana Christmas tree farms vanishing

KALISPELL, Mont. – Not long ago, rows of meticulously trimmed Scotch pine and Colorado blue spruce trees filled the Fincher property on Lake Blaine Road. Finchers’ Evergreens was a successful business, operating primarily in Christmas trees but also selling spruce as landscaping trees.

Today, remnants of the tidy rows remain, but the business is defunct. Growing houses has proved a more profitable venture, and Skip Fincher and his brother plan to develop part of the property as a 30-lot subdivision.

“Land in the valley has got to the point where raising Christmas trees is not economical,” he said.

Last year, fewer than 5,000 trees were cut in Montana. In contrast, Oregon, the nation’s leading Christmas tree supplier, harvested 8 million this year.

For the better part of the 20th century, however, the Tobacco and Flathead valleys led the American Christmas tree industry. In 1956, at the height of the boom, 4.2 million trees were cut in Montana.

The business began in the 1920s with a nationwide shortage of Christmas trees. Few tree farms existed, and national forests were being heavily logged. East and Midwest markets were desperate for trees.

“When they looked westward, all they had was plains. Then they reached the mountains, and all they had was trees. And these ones in northwest Montana was pretty special because they held their needles,” Darris Flanagan said .

Flanagan, a retired teacher, historian and writer, has been connected to the tree industry almost since its inception. His maternal grandfather sold trees in the 30s. His father began cutting wild Douglas fir in the early 1940s, and as soon as he was big enough, Flanagan helped with the harvest.

It was partly to honor this family history that the Fortine resident decided to write about the area’s Christmas tree industry. When he first considered writing a book, Montana was still a major tree producer. By the time “The Montana Christmas Tree Story” was published this fall, however, the business had long since folded and was in danger of being forgotten.

“The wild Doug fir business, when Northwest Montana was really called the Christmas tree capital of the world, that was going to be lost. Really, nobody else was probably going to write that story,” Flanagan said. “I just felt like I kind of owed it to the people to write that story.”

It was in Eureka that Montana Christmas trees first received national attention.

According to Flanagan, the area’s relatively dry climate and short frost-free season created dense foliage. Autumn’s hard frosts set the needles so they didn’t shed as quickly as did needles from trees from other parts of the country. This made Tobacco Valley trees ideal for shipping.

“Eureka used to be the Christmas tree capital of the world,” Fincher said. “It was all wild trees, all Douglas fir, shipped everywhere – California and all over the country.”

The first trees were cut and shipped from Montana in 1924. In 1936, 1.2 million trees were shipped from the state. Five years later, that number had more than doubled, exceeding 3 million trees.

The industry was largely unregulated until the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, when people worried subpar trees were giving Montana growers a bad reputation. To combat the negative image, Montana growers had to produce higher-quality trees.

But in the mid-‘60s, wild Douglas firs began to fall out of favor as consumers sought fuller, more symmetrical trees. Artificial trees, which had been on the market for a number of years, contributed to this ideal, as did plantations, which were becoming increasingly popular even in northwest Montana.

Growers found a ripe market north of the border, Fincher said, especially in Alberta and Saskatchewan. He estimates that each year, Flathead farmers produced between half a million and a million Christmas trees and sold about a quarter million. This lasted until the 1990s, when nearly all of northwest Montana’s Christmas tree operations were dealt their death blows.

Competition from the Pacific Northwest was on the rise. With a mild climate and 40 inches of rain each year, Oregon and Washington rapidly became two of the country’s top-producing Christmas tree states.

“They could get to market in four years versus seven years for trees in the valley,” Fincher said.

With the industry down and property values skyrocketing as people moved to the area in droves, some growers found their land repurposed. Many Bigfork farmers with trees on leased property watched their crops plowed up to make way for something more profitable.

Survivors are rare. Fincher estimates there were 10 to 15 major growers in the valley in 1989. Today, he can only name a few.

Until recently, his family was among them. They sold their last tree a few years back.