Shelton
CHRISTMASTOWN ORIGINS
Stella Wenstob, Fjord contributor
Shelton is typically branded as a logging community. Children were born in caulk boots and graduated to a peevee and pike pole when they were tall enough. The streets were built wide to accommodate the oversized logging trucks going down West Railroad Avenue to the mill. Sawdust made up the grit that produced many pioneer pearls. But trees weren’t just cut to make into boards or pulped into paper or cellulose products. Up until the 1990s, Shelton was known as Christmastown, USA – the Christmas Tree Capital of America.
As early as the 1920s, wild-grown Douglas-firs (Pseudotsuga menziesii) were hand-cut to thin out already growing forests, such as logging cut-blocks and the Olympic National Forest. In 1918, G.R. Kirk was working as manager of a mill when he received word from his brotherin-law in El Paso, Texas requesting a train car full of wild-cut Douglas-fir trees for the Christmas market. Initially doubtful, Kirk sent out the trees and was surprised to receive an order for two train carloads for the next year. Kirk cut three carloads instead and went down to Los Angeles to sell them himself, never returning to milling again. These wild Christmas trees were a major product shipped to markets in Seattle, Oregon, California, and Texas.
Top, Shelton (1945) Railroad Avenue before Tollie took residence (photo:Green Commonwealth, Stewart Holbrook); above, trees being loaded on railroad cars bound for New York (photo: WA Agriculture) FJORD 18
Early Christmas tree cutters based out of Shelton included the John Hofert Company and the G.R. Kirk Company, who developed methods of “culturing” – trimming wild trees with long knives (look similar to machetes) to promote the fluffy, full growth consumers desired in their Christmas trees. Fertilizers, such as nitrogen, were also introduced to encourage deep greens of the tree boughs.
