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Last year, a highlight of the annual tree lighting in Murphy was the national Christmas tree passing through on the way to Washington. Christmas trees for major events draw such attention, but there is the story of another great Christmas tree that has roots right here in Cherokee County. Here’s the story.
It was 1982, and Travis Guest had a problem. As the manager of signs and posters for Riches, the largest and most prestigious chain of department stores in the Atlanta area, it fell within his duties to be the man who secured The Great Tree, the name assigned to the tree that would be hoisted atop the downtown Riches store at Christmas and serve as the city and state’s official Christmas tree.
The lighting of the tree on Thanksgiving would mark the beginning of the Christmas buying season. The tradition had begun in 1947. This was to be the 36th Great Tree.
Guest’s problem was that he had not found a suitable tree. It was October, and he was running out of time. He had exhausted the Georgia locations where he might discover a suitable tree to serve as The Great Tree.
The specifications were the tree must be tall, with a round cone shape, as a Christmas tree is supposed to be. A tree growing in the middle of a thicket of trees would not have the full circular format needed. In addition to growing away from other trees, the Great Tree must be accessible to a crew who would bind the limbs, cut and load the bound tree, and transport it to downtown Atlanta.
Guest had a couple of prospects only to find them cut down by Georgia Power. By necessity he had ventured over the state line in North Carolina and previously trees had been found near Franklin, and one, 10 years earlier, had been found in the Violet community of Cherokee County.
As he wound down Rural Road 1314 at Hiwassee Dam, he saw the perfect Great Northern White Pine alongside an old red house. No one was home, it appeared vacant. At the house on the hill across the road, he inquired who might own the tree.
“I do,” the man who answered the door told him.
Guest smiled, and the negotiations began. He described his mission and learned the owner had planted the tree as a child in 1936.
“How much is the most you’ve ever paid for one of those Great Trees?” Guest was asked. He answered that sometimes the tree had been donated. He made the mistake of going into detail how hard it was to find a suitable tree.
A few hundred dollars later, Guest left to arrange a crew to come get his tree, and a smiling Euclid Voyles, my Dad, now had a few hundred more dollars in his pocket.
Days later a crew of eight arrived with a cherry picker and a huge float trailer, where the 82-foot tree’s limbs were carefully bound up as one would do a household Christmas tree, and all 14,000 pounds of it, once bound, was carefully lifted to the large float, and secured.
Seventy-five people watched, among them 50 Hiwassee Dam students who had come on the school’s activity bus to witness the event. The tree loaded; it began its journey to Atlanta.
The Voyles family, your author included, was invited to Atlanta for the lighting of the Great Tree that had once stood on their property. A crew of six men had been decorating the tree for two and a half weeks, winding 13 miles of wire, 10,500 lights and 4,000 ornaments. The star on top was 7 feet high.
That Thanksgiving evening nine family members were escorted through the closed Riches downtown store to the store roof where we were served hot chocolate and introduced to many of the local dignitaries, including a personal introduction to the courteous former Ambassador to the United Nations and Mayor of Atlanta, Andrew Young.
The mayor asked my Dad, “Mr. Voyles, how much money did you get for that tree?”
My Dad smiled and answered, “Mr. Mayor, no one will ever know how much I got for that tree.” The newspaper articles about the tree suggested the fee had been $200. They were misinformed. Dad received $300.
That tree lighting in 1982, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was attended by more than 25,000 Georgians. All agreed it was indeed a Great Tree.
After the tree lighting we returned home and, later after the tree was taken down, it was split into firewood and the wood donated to Atlanta area needy families. The question of what burning pine as firewood might do to add dangerous creosote to a chimney was not mentioned. However, if only offered as kindling, the massive tree benefited thousands.
No one in the family mentioned to Guest or any of those at the lighting that the tree had been a matter of concern in the Voyles household for several months before Guest arrived on his mission. There was a worry the tree might fall on the small red rental house and crush it.
In fact, my Dad had been looking to find someone to pay to take the tree down, until the day Travis Guest pulled up to his house.
Bruce Voyles’ local history column runs every other week in the Cherokee Scout. Email him at RoadsLessTraveled@cherokeescout.com.