SATSOP — When Mr. Bush wanted a tree, he sent an aide to Olympic National Forest.
Christmas trees for the White House and Camp David will come from Northwest Plantations near Satsop in Grays Harbor County, west of Olympia.
Chief White House usher Gary Walters chose an 18½-foot noble fir for the executive mansion, an 11-foot noble fir for the Oval Office, and a 10-foot noble fir for Camp David.
He visited the tree plantation Tuesday.
The National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse south of the White House is a Colorado blue spruce from York, Pa.
A Christmas tree has been a White House tradition since 1835, when President Andrew Jackson’s French chef made him a sugar-frosted pine tree surrounded with toy animals made from flavored ices.
President Franklin Pierce erected a Christmas tree at the White House in 1856 for a group of Sunday School children while carolers sang “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.”
President Grover Cleveland was the first to use electric lights on a White House tree.
The tradition nearly foundered in 1902 when President Theodore Roosevelt told his children that cutting down a tree would undermine his conservation program.
But Roosevelt relented when Gifford Pinchot, then the nation’s chief forester, told him that thinning a forest helped it thrive.
Roosevelt’s son Archie rigged up a tree that year with the help of a White House carpenter, according to Roosevelt’s correspondence.
The episode was the basis of a children’s novel, A Christmas Tree in the White House, by Gary Hines. Illustrated by Alexandra Wallner, to novel was published in 1998 by Henry Holt and Co.
President Calvin Coolidge established the National Community Christmas Tree in 1923 and the tree-lighting ceremony on the White House lawn.
Since then, the Ellipse tree has come from a different state each year.
Among its decorations are 50 special ornaments, one for each state.