Jaycees Brave Snow To Bring Christmas Tree, Green Boughs To Brighten Lewiston Yuletide

Evergreen boughs and a fir tree, 35 feet tall, were brought in from snow-clad timber beyond Waha yesterday by 23 Christmas-minded members of the Lewiston Junior Chamber of Commerce.

It was the Jaycees’ annual trek to the mountains for greenery to decorate Lewiston’s Main street for the coming yuletide season.

Two truckloads of boughs, almost double the amount of previous years, were gathered near Black Pine cabin, according to S. M. (Chuck) Lund and Delbert Anderson, co-chairmen of Jaycees’ Christmas activities. Five inches of snow are on the ground in the Black Pine area, they reported.

Boughs and the tree were unloaded about 4:30 in the afternoon at the Nez Perce Tractor & Equipment Co. warehouse at 2nd and S streets. Jaycees will start work tonight at the warehouse and continue daily after business hours stringing the boughs into garlands. Boy Scouts of the troop sponsored by Jaycees are going to help with the work, Anderson said.

The fir tree will be installed at the traffic island in the approach to the Clearwater memorial bridge where it will be trimmed, Dec. 2 Anderson said it will be kept lighted from that date through the Christmas season.

To Light Street

The length of Main street will be decorated with lighter garlands this year for the first time from the Lewis-Clark hotel at the west, to the traffic island at the east, Jaycees announced.

Trucks for the trip were supplied by Kenneth Riechow of the Lewiston Truck & Tractor Co., and Orville Konen of Tammany. Among the 23 workers were Palmer Chase, Christmas activities director for Jaycees; President Lew Flora, and Joe Skok, past president of the Idaho Junior Chamber of Commerce. The party left town at 8 a.m. and ate a hot lunch at noon at Black Pine.

This story was published in the Nov. 19, 1951, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.