The trees that shade Mountain Avenue and Berthoud’s old residential neighborhoods have always given special character to the community. But trees haven’t always grown here.
When the first settlers arrived in the 1860s, the only trees in the area were cottonwoods that grew along the banks of the Little Thompson River. The exception was a solitary hackberry that stood as a lonely sentinel near present-day Lone Tree Lake. Given the scarcity of trees, planting them was one of the first orders of business for the early pioneers. When the trees they planted had to be cut down, the old-timers mourned their demise like the passing of an old friend.
Some of the first trees planted in Berthoud were set in the ground in the town’s first residential neighborhood, the west side of the 500 block of Fourth Street. In 1937, the Berthoud newspaper reported, “The old giant cottonwood at the M.N. Johnson corner, cut down a few days ago, ringed up a half century, save one year. Back in 1888, A. Fairbairn, George Rose, L.H. Kelly, Dr. W.W. Cole, F.I. Davis, and other property owners in the east half of that block held a meeting at which it was decided that trees should be put out on several lots. Mr. Fairbairn, having had more experience in farming and tree planting than the others, was chosen to obtain the necessary trees, and see to setting them out, which he did; getting the sproutlings down on the Little Thompson. Some of the property owners later replaced the cottonwoods on their lots with maples and other shade trees, but the old corner giant was left to spread its shading branches. Of those early day townsmen who started the tree planting campaign Mr. Fairbairn alone remained to see the fall of that old patriarch on Johnson corner.”…