Christmas tree company in midst of holiday onslaught

It’s crunch time at Snow Line Tree Co.

At the only remaining major Christmas tree shipping company in the Flathead Valley, the Kalispell tree yard is a blur of greenery as workers bale evergreen trees of various sorts, preparing them for truck transport to retail outlets in every state west of the Mississippi River.

Inside, women are feverishly assembling wreaths and making garlands.

With the opening of Snow Line’s retail shop and indoor tree lot less than a week away — it opens the day after Thanksgiving — the pressure is on to transform the place into a winter wonderland.

Snow Line owner Tom Little expects to have about 400 retail trees displayed in a former horse arena that’s part of the operation on U.S. 93 South.

“We hang them from the rafters so people can walk all the way around to see them,” he said. “It’s like a forest. It’ll be solid trees.”

The retail Elf Shoppe adjacent to the indoor tree lot will be covered wall to wall with a variety of evergreens shaped into wreaths, candy canes, door swags and centerpieces.

The Christmas tree season is fast and furious, and Little has a crew of close to 30 to handle the operation. It’s a short window of opportunity for sales. Trees are shipped out starting around Nov. 10, and by Thanksgiving they’ve all reached their destinations.

The trees are a mix of wild varieties cut in the mountains on private, state and federal land, and plantation trees that largely come from the Bigfork and Ferndale areas. Some plantation trees are from Wisconsin.

Crews begin in late October making the pieces sold locally as well as shipped to distant outlets. The key to being able to cut boughs and handle them without losing needles is doing so after the first hard frost, Little said.

Marilyn Brady has been making wreaths at Snow Line for 17 years, and right about now she says she could make them in her sleep. She loves the seasonal work, though, having grown up in a family that operated a floral shop and nursery.

“Wreaths were always my favorite,” she said, not stopping to talk as her nimble hands assembled yet another circle of green boughs.

Snow Line sells a lot of wreaths locally to youth organizations such as Boy Scouts and and sports teams for fundraising projects, Little said.

The retail end of Snow Line flourishes until Dec. 15. By then most people have picked out their trees, and another season has come and gone.

Little expects to ship out about 30,000 trees this year and figures Snow Line will produce close to 15,000 boughs. It’s still a good business, but the volume pales in comparison to the company’s heyday in the 1960s when it shipped out 600,000 trees a year.

“We were one of the smaller companies at that time,” he said. “There were several tree companies that shipped more than a million trees apiece.”

A half-century ago, the Christmas tree industry stretched through the mountains from Missoula to parts of British Columbia.

Little, 65, went to work for Snow Line in 1960 when it was owned by Nate Boyd, Fred Larsen and Hank Marken and operated out of the central cherry warehouse where Kalispell Center Mall now stands. He bought out the three partners one by one, and today he and his wife Carolyn are veterans of the time-honored business that dates back to 1955.

One thing guests will never find at the Little home is an artificial Christmas tree. Little said his tree of choice is the grand fir.

“It has the most aroma,” he said.

Snow Line holds its open house Friday through Sunday, Nov. 25, and will remain open seven days a week until Dec. 15. Hours are from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.