Utah Tree History: A Landscape in Flux

Utah history isn't just about the people who lived and worked here. It's also about some of the oldest living organisms in our state -- trees! Learn more about our arborous elders.

The history of trees across rural Utah is one characterized by transformation and resilience. With major environmental changes such as colonization in the nineteenth century or even global warming today, Utah's landscape and the trees that live here are in a constant state of flux.

From boxelders and junipers, to spruce, pine, and aspen, Utah has lots of native trees that are still surprising scientists. Ponderosa pines, for example, typically live about 350 years, but one specimen cut down for testing in Utah's Great Basin was found to be a gobsmacking 940 years old. Some of Utah's trees are even older. One aspen grove in Fishlake National Forest is actually a clone colony of 40,000 genetically identical trees connected by one root system -- making it the single largest tree in the world. It was named "Pando" and is thought to date back to the end of the last ice age.

Utah's trees, while having lives of their own, also impact the humans who live here. Ancestral Puebloan and Fremont peoples used pinyons and junipers to build sturdy granaries that have clung to cliff faces for thousands of years. Trees were important resources for tribes such as the Shoshone and Ute who traveled seasonally across Utah's landscape.

When Mormons settled here in 1847, they brought their own ideas about what trees were valuable and their planting transformed much of the Wasatch Front. A budding Utah silk industry, for example, required mulberry trees to feed hungry silkworms -- an experiment that has left us mulberry-stained sidewalks to this day. Black locust trees were popular with early settlers because of their beautiful leaves and thick shade. But black locusts also had the unintended side-effect of imbuing Utah soil with more nitrogen. Perhaps the most recognized tree planted by Mormon settlers across the state is the Lombardy poplar. Imported from northern Italy, this fast-growing tall tree was planted in rows to form windbreaks to protect fields and stabilize the banks of precious water canals.

Today, many of Utah's trees face unique challenges, as climate change, beetle infestation, forest fires, and human intervention change their history once again.