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Capitol Christmas tree arrived on Capitol Hill from the Tongass National Forest in Alaska.
This is the second time a tree has come from Alaska.
The first was in 2015.
The tree was named Spruce Wayne by a social media vote.
Representatives from the Architect of the Capitol's office and the U.S. Forest Service spoke at the tree's arrival ceremony, along with the two truck drivers who delivered the 80-foot Sitka Spruce to the U.S. Capitol.
All right.
Good morning, how about Alaska?
Woo!
You did it!
Alaska is here.
It was 80 degrees last week, and we got some Alaska weather with this Alaska tree.
This is great.
So welcome.
Thank you for joining us all here for the 2024 Capitol Christmas tree.
My name is Jim Kaufman, and I'm the director of Capitol Grounds and Arboretum at the Architected Capitol.
And I am honored to accept this year's tree on behalf of the United States Congress.
Lighting the Capitol Christmas tree has been a holiday tradition since 1964, and it's one that we're always happy to be a part of.
This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Capitol Christmas Tree, and we are honored to have this Sitka spruce all the way from the Tongass National Forest, located in the great state of Alaska.
For more than half a century, the Forest Service has been an incredible partner in making sure we have the perfect selection for the people's tree.
And we are proud to have this Alaskan tree this year for the second time.
I'd like to thank the United States Forest Service and especially the awesome team from the Wrangell District.
Y'all did a great job in finding the perfect tree in the world's largest temperate rainforest.
What an experience.
So this year, the tree had quite a journey.
It traveled more than 700 miles over the sea and more than 4,000 miles on land.
Made many stops all the way around on its journey to the Capitol.
I also want to have a special thanks to the Wrangell, to not just Wrangell community, but Wrangell High School students that use technology and innovation to help this tree stay fresh during its long journey.
We truly appreciate all the efforts to help bring the holiday spirit to Washington, D.C., our nation's capital.
Today, we're going to set the tree in the west front lawn.
The Capitol Grounds and Arboretum team already hard at work.
We'll spend the next several days decorating the tree with thousands of LED lights and thousands of handcrafted ornaments handcrafted by the people of Alaska.
We look forward to seeing the tree lit up in all its splendor for the 60th annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony on December 3rd.
And we're so glad to have a beautiful tree that Alaskans and Americans can be proud of.
It's now my pleasure to introduce Miss Barbara Miranda, the Tongass National Forest Deputy Supervisor.
Woo!
Thank you so much.
And it is such an amazing day for Team Alaska from the U.S. Forest Service.
It is with the deepest gratitude and pride that I am looking out there at our Forest Service colleagues and all the work that they did over the course of the last year to get a tree from the Wrangell Ranger District on the Tongass National Forest all the way here to Washington, D.C. I'd like to extend my gratitude also to the Capitol Grounds crew.
They're going to have a job ahead of them to get this 80-foot-tall Sitka spruce off the truck after its 4,000-mile journey.
And we're going to be delighted to come back in a week to see the lights go on on the tree.
This is a year of firsts for the people's tree.
Not only is it the first time the tree has come from the Tongass National Forest, but there's also some innovative firsts that made it stay as fresh and green as what you see here.
It's bright and green and fresh with no needles falling off of it yet because it was harvested with the complete root ball intact.
And some really innovative, ingenuous Alaska kids figured out a system to keep that tree moist all the way across the country.
It's a wonderful tradition and one that the U.S. Forest Service is really proud to have been a part of for the last 54 years to deliver a tree from a national forest in the nation to the capital here in DC.
And so to have it come from Alaska, where the people are diverse, very, very creative, and really resilient, is a real honor to be here to be the one to be able to speak to the fact that Alaska is an amazing place.
And I'm just thrilled to represent the people in the communities and cultures of Alaska as we traveled across the country, making whistle-stop tours all the way across the across as we came.
It's really something that brought the people together.
And in this time, that's something that we can all use.
The logo that you see on the truck here that was created by an Alaskan artist symbolizes the iconic features that inspire the allure of Alaska and acknowledged the collaborative effort that was made to steward the resources in Alaska and offers a special greeting from the Alaska Native people.
With our 19 federally recognized tribes that call the Tongass National Forest home, they are the people that have stewarded those lands since time immemorial and they offer these words in greeting to the people of the nation.
Kayeh, Sagu, Ka, Tuwuke.
And that means peace, joy, and happiness.
And we hope that's what this tree brings to the nation here today.
So thank you all.
Thank you to all the Alaskans that are standing here in this crowd and all the Alaskans back in my home state.
And Merry Christmas, everybody.
Woo!
Thank you, Barbara.
And prior to opening up for any kind of questions, just again, really awesome.
And I want to express our gratitude to so many different people from the community of Wrangell, to the Forest Service all over the people of Alaska, to our very own Architect of the Capitol staff, our Capitol Grounds and Arboretum team, and the U.S. Capitol Police.
Just a great job and a great effort to really come together to make the people's tree what it is and everybody will be able to celebrate.
So thank you.
Yeah, questions?
Round of applause for the truck drivers.
You did a great job.
Absolutely.
Let's get us a couple.
There you go.
Tell us about the voyage.
Thank you, everybody.
I'm glad to be here for the second time.
So I honor the Alaskan tradition that we started here last few years.
It's been a great ride.
We had at the events, we're welcomed all over coming down the highway and whatnot.
The events were awesome.
And I'm glad to see everybody from Alaska here.
Mr. Sullivan and his crew.
Mrs. Murkowski we've seen yesterday.
It was great.
And I hope everybody have a Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year.
Appreciate it.
Welcome, everybody.
I'm glad you're all here together.
The highlight of the trip is the show and tell.
Driving the truck is just plain work.
But every stop we went at was happy faces.
It's a happy way to make a trip.
You've been driving a truck.
71 years, the first 71.
In March of this coming year, I'll be doing my 50th year with Linden Transport.
640 years combined.
Yeah.
Could you pronounce and spell your names, both of you, please?
My first name is John, J-O-H-N, S-C-H-A-N-K.
And the other gentleman?
Fred, F-R-E-D, Austin, A-U-S-T-I-N, think, Texas.
And to top things off, me and Fred combine, we have 10 million miles driving in Alaska.
It's a lot of miles.
It is.
I don't know if I can do it again.
You've got to do the speeches.
Okay, I'll speak for you.
I hear they have their own social media influencers here, too.
So they're quite the Instagram stars, I hear.
Yeah, we're awarded.
Excellent.
Any other questions that we can answer for you from Sparr Service?
Yes.
So, forgive me, I don't know if it was two years ago or last year, both the Capitol Christmas tree and the White House Christmas tree fell over.
Could you talk about precautions?
That's wrong right there.
Oh, I apologize.
The Capitol Christmas tree has stood strong and mighty through everything.
No issues last year.
My apologies, what precautions will you take just in case there are high winds?
So we have, we go through and we test our system to be able to anchor it in.
So our system is tested each year.
We have, as you'll see, the crane will go up.
We have our crane operators that will monitor the conditions that we're seeing right now.
It'll get mounted, and as we mount it in, we have a series of precautions to make sure that it is secure in the ground from not just guy wires, but other methods that are used to stake it in.
So thankfully, we haven't had an issue, and it's a safe system that we have.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Great question.
Any other questions or concerns?
How long did it take you to find this tree?
Oh, that was a fun trip.
So the entire selection took about a week.
And really, thankfully to the hard work of the Forest Service and the community, they narrowed the search down to about eight trees.
So they went through their over million acres of forest to really narrow down a selection of candidate trees that I would be able to take a look at.
So we were able to venture out to each location and inspect each tree and really look at what is involved to make the perfect tree.
So 30 foot, 25 to 30 foot bottom skirt to being roughly 70 foot tall.
This one topped out at 80.
It's big.
It's Alaska.
That's the way it's supposed to go.
And we were able to really see how that tree had to look perfect 360 degrees so that it looks great for the people's tree right in the middle of the west front lawn.
You know what?
Any chance we could have a Charlie Brown Christmas tree?
That's the beauty of our nation's farce, is it's the importance of the land and the management of the land.
And trees in farce don't grow like you get them at Home Depot.
So that's why the job of selecting a tree is really difficult.
Trees and farce grow together and you often get shaded outsides and trees that are not what people consider the perfect Christmas tree.
That's why it's so hard.
But the Forest Service, they work really hard to find those candidate trees that do look great 360 degrees all the way around.
Any other questions?
Forest Service or for the architect at Capitol?
Good.
Excellent.
Okay.
Well, thank you.
Thank you all for coming out.
Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan spoke on the Senate floor about the U.S. Capitol Christmas tree from his home state.
We're going to bring a little bit of Alaska here to D.C. That's right, the Capitol Christmas tree, which will be lit up in front of the Capitol building for the month of December, is coming all the way from the Tongass National Forest.
Presiding officer cares a lot about the Tongass, we know that.
Just outside of Wrangell, Alaska, that's a journey of almost 5,000 miles.
And this is no living room-size Christmas tree, folks.
It is an 85-foot Sitka spruce.
That's a big tree.
You're going to see it out in front of the Capitol here very soon.
Now, I'm sure everybody listening, and we know there's millions of people listening to this Alaska of the Week speech, millions, they have a lot of questions.
Wait, how do you transport a tree that size almost 5,000 miles across America?
There's a lot of moving parts, including seven different vehicles, multiple forest service members on tree watering duty.
You don't want your tree to dry out when you drive it across the country.
And of course, the intrepid truckers, truck drivers, who have taken up this charge to successfully and safely deliver Alaska's Christmas tree to America's mall, to the Capitol.
These Alaskans, Fred Austin and John Schen, longtime Alaska truck drivers, both Teamsters, are the men responsible for driving for three weeks to deliver this tree to Washington, D.C.