HELENA, Mont. (AP) – The spruce tree destined to serve as the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree was carefully selected from a Montana forest and hauled across the country in a special truck to preserve its freshness.
The 79-foot-tall (24-meter-tall) tree, which was lit up last month during a ceremony with congressional members, had its own website and social media presence.
Now, some Montana companies hope to keep its fame alive by trucking it back home so it can be used to help rebuild a historic chalet in Glacier National Park that was destroyed in a wildfire last summer.
Some critics questioned the amount of fuel that would be burned to haul the tree back across the U.S. when Montana has plenty of trees, while others didn’t mind as long as taxpayer money wasn’t involved.
The effort is certainly more sentimental than practical, but no public money is being spent and no one can profit from the tree’s use, said Bruce Ward with Choose Outdoors, the Denver-based nonprofit that organized the effort to bring the tree to Washington.