Nome National Forest has sprouted again

For over 25 years, Christmas trees and cutouts of Santa, mermaids, walruses and more have made their way onto the sea ice in front of Nome. As soon as the ice is sufficiently thick and in place, Nome becomes perhaps the only place in the world with its own seasonal national forest. How and why did this spectacle come to be?
Charlie Lean tells the story. Lean has lived here in Nome for the better part of his life. Lean spends his time helping at Norton Sound Economic Development Corporation as a fisheries biologist and also volunteers with the Rotary Club, a philanthropic group that seeks to serve the community. And then, four years ago, Lean also became the keeper of the forest.
The story begins at Fat Freddies, an iconic restaurant that closed and was replaced by Bering Sea Restaurant. The owners of Fat Freddies were Connie Madden and her husband Bob Madden Sr. Connie was an advocate for a healthier community and led an initiative called D.A.W.N. (Drugs Aren’t Welcome in Nome) to fight the presence of drugs in the community. Connie and her friend Nancy McGuire, the longtime editor and publisher of the Nome Nugget newspaper, hatched a practical joke of forest-size proportions to fool tourists during the Iditarod. They would plant trees in the ice. Charlie recalls the joke, saying “It was kind of funny, fooled a few people.”
The story takes a dramatic twist when Nancy, being the editor of the paper, took a photo of a middle-age man wearing a dark jacket and a campaign cap in front of the “Nome National Forest” sign and ran it in the local paper. As it happened, a federal employee took offense and threatened to arrest the man for impersonating a federal officer. Nothing came out of it, Charlie stated.
Years later, although Connie and Nancy have passed on, the forest is still going strong with the help of Lean, Tom Vaden and the Rotary Club. For the past two years, the Rotary Club sells Christmas trees to help make Christmas happen, which in turn helps to repopulate the forest. The wooden cutouts and animal figures come from all over the community. Some are made by youth, some at Anvil Mountain Correctional Center. And sometimes a couple new cutouts just show up. Before the ice melts, Lean and other volunteers go out, collect the cutouts and store them for the next year.
When asked if he felt the forest benefited the community, Lean says,“I think it does. It’s a little silly and not a great social thing, but it adds a smile to people’s faces. provides a space out front of Nome where they can have the Iditarod Golf Tournament, and a place for tourists to get their pictures taken with Nome in the background.”
Lean’s favorite thing about the forest is seeing the tourists getting their pictures taken out there and enjoying the feature. Some challenges the forest has faced is trying to find enough trees, keep cutouts fresh and getting new ones to replace the worn ones and the occasional vandalism. Lean also says that there is a small cost to keeping the forest going.
The community can support this project in more ways than one. Individuals and groups in the community can sponsor a cutout, repaint old figures or make new ones. They can also help making the holes and hauling trees and cutouts, and of course, by donating trees.