At a meeting at Wasatch Mountain State Park near Midway on Tuesday evening, the director of Utah State Parks announced that several elderly black willow trees will be removed from Soldier Hollow.
The trees were why Utah State Parks picked this spot for a new campground, now under construction as part of an upgrade program for the park. But the department now says the trees are dangerous and can’t be saved.
The decision comes after an arborist studied the huge trees and determined that they’re too decayed and damaged to be saved. The arborist said that for one tree, it was “just a matter of time” before it broke apart completely.
“They are beautiful, and we realize how beautiful they are and what a great resource they are,” said Jeff Rasmussen, director of the Utah Division of State Parks. “And we’re thankful that those memories that were allowed to be created in that area, that means a lot to us.”
He added that “removing any natural resources, including trees, is not something that our division takes lightly.”
One attendee voiced her opposition to the decision to remove the old trees, saying it was a “crime” not to allow them to die a natural death. “That’s the honorable thing to do,” she said.
But Brian Nelson, director of the Utah Division of Risk Management, said his department agreed with the decision. “We have significant concerns, folks,” he said.
Rasmussen said that now that state officials have the arborist’s findings, Utah State Parks wouldn’t be able to have the area open to the public, whether the campground is built or not.
If the trees were to be made safe, Rasmussen said, sharing information from the arborist, they’d have to be cut back severely and braced to the point where they’d lose their character. “They would look nothing like they are today,” he said. “I don’t think anyone here wants that.”
The department plans to plant more than 30 trees to replace the ones that are removed. Rasmussen said they will plant trees better suited for Utah’s growing conditions, with more strength and longevity than willows, which frequently break apart and die.
Wasatch Mountain is Utah’s largest state park at more than 21,000 acres, seeing more than a half-million visitors last year.
A historic site where the U.S. Army camped in the 1850s and Native Americans before that, Soldier Hollow was added to the park following the 2002 Winter Olympics, along with its facilities that include The Chalet, located by the willows near the shore of Deer Creek Reservoir. Popular campgrounds are located on the opposite side of the park up Pine Canyon Road, but there is nowhere to camp in the park’s lower reaches.