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| Cutting your own Christmas tree can help the forest | |||
| Wednesday, November 23, 2011 14:54 |
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On weekends in December, it’s common to see cars driving down Ute Pass with a pine tree strapped to the roof. Many are folks who bought a $10 permit from the U.S. Forest Service and ventured into the Pike National Forest near Woodland Park to cut a tree they’ll take home and decorate for Christmas, the fresh aroma filling their home for weeks. As the cars roar back into Colorado Springs along U.S. 24, a brightly colored Forest Service tag hanging from a tree limb, they pass by the 16-acre homestead, and the grave, of the man who made their Christmas tree-cutting ritual possible: Everard Spencer Keithley. Keithley was superintendent of the Pike National Forest for two decades, 1925-46. During his 35-year forest service career, he was credited with planting, or overseeing the planting, of 30 million trees, according to his obituary in the Nov. 22, 1973, Gazette-Telegraph. But he did more than plant trees and build roads, like the Rampart Range Road. Keithley pioneered the program of inviting the public into the forest to cut Christmas trees, according to an April 26, 1946, story in the forest service’s Administrative Digest, written upon his retirement. “Keithley made the first sales of Christmas trees from the National Forest . . . in 1920, thinning dense, young stands of Douglas fir for this purpose,” the story said. In his autobiography, Keithley talked about how 200 trees were cut the first year at 15 cents apiece. They were taken from Jarr Canyon about 25 miles southwest of Denver. By 1930, 25,000 trees were cut from the forest “in accordance with good silviculture practice,” Keithley noted in his autobiography. Today 5,000 permits are sold each year in the Pikes Peak region, said Sue Miller, recreation permit administrator. This year, tree-cutting permits go on sale Nov. 28 at the agency’s office at 601 S. Weber St. for a cutting period that runs through Dec. 14. Miller said there is a limit of five permits per person. Besides the forest service office, permits also will be sold in the parking lot at Woodland Park Middle School on Dec. 3, 4, 10 and 11. The school is on Kelley Road, just off Rampart Range Road, appropriately enough. Nationwide, about 50,000 trees were cut from national forests in 2006, a 71 percent drop from 1998 when about 70,400 trees were cut. About 13,900 were taken from Bureau of Land Management forests in 2006, the latest numbers available, down from 27,700 in 1998. Those totals are a fraction of the 30 million or so Christmas trees sold each year in the U.S. Besides the Christmas tree program, there is another related Keithley innovation that lives on. “He originated the red tree tag now used on all trees cut from National Forests for Christmas use throughout the United States,” the 1946 retirement piece said. Keithley recalled his inspiration for the tags: “A red tag was attached to each tree cut on National Forest land carrying this message: ‘This tree was cut from the Pike National Forest as an improvement thinning that its neighbor might grow faster.’ ” After seeing the response to his holiday cutting program, Keithley started Christmas tree plantations in the forest on 5- and 10-acre plots. About 4,000 trees were planted and then opened to cutting 15 years later. Of course, that’s a fraction of what he accomplished after moving to the Pikes Peak region and becoming forest supervisor in late 1925. By that time, Keithley already was renowned for his planting work, including 1 million trees in 1924 in conjunction with the construction of the Mount Herman Road to Woodland Park. Keithley was credited with reforesting the slopes of Pikes Peak, mostly barren after an inferno in 1850, as well as the Mount Herman burn near Palmer Lake and large areas of the South Platte watershed. In fact, Keithley was known, according to retirement stories, as “The Area Tree Planter.” (Doesn’t have quite the same ring as “Johnny Appleseed” does it?) He was so serious about planting trees he planted a nursery on a large part of his homestead on the east edge of Manitou Springs where he grew junipers and Douglas firs to be transplanted in the forest. Remnants of his nursery — rows of trees — remain visible in the homestead now known as the Keithley Log Cabin National Historic District, created in 1983 to recognize a collection of seven log cabins Keithley built on the property between 1919 and 1956.
He is buried in the Crystal Valley Cemetery in Manitou Springs.
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