Surrounded by a carefully cultivated forest of aspens and pines, 93-year-old Dave McBride goes about business as usual before his plants are replaced by the artifacts of the Tahoe Maritime Museum in September. The transition from nursery to museum puts a lingering final note on a legacy stretching back to the early days of Lake Tahoe when McBride turned a stake in the emerging Christmas tree market into the thriving Tahoe Tree Company.
McBride cut his first Christmas tree down in 1950, and quickly cornered the market on what he calls the “prime deal” for Christmas trees in Lake Tahoe, building on trustworthy relationships with the landowners around Tahoe, Eagle Lake, and Truckee. He supplied trees to Reno, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Hawaii, and Alaska.
Honest dealing was a rare commodity in those days, according to McBride, and sometimes appeared in the most unlikely places.
“I got hooked by every crook in Tahoe City and Truckee,” McBride said. “It was kind of a rough business; there were more Christmas trees stolen in Tahoe than you can imagine. My best customers were The Mafia … They were the cleanest people I dealt with.”
McBride would sell trees to The Mafia who would truck them down to Los Angeles. The Mafia always had the money and never tried to cheat him McBride said.
By the 1960s and 70s, McBride had a crew of about 40 workers and would sometimes cut between 600 and 1,000 trees in a single day. After carefully selecting the trees he planned to cut during long summer walks, in the winter his team would cut as many trees as possible from sunrise to sunset before the weather turned south or he lost his workers to the ski slopes.
“They were all ski bums,” McBride said. “They just kept going until there was enough snow to ski and then, goodbye.”
At the time, McBride was living with his wife and daughters on what is now known as 64 Acres, which they leased from the Truckee Carson Irrigation District. Just before Tahoe’s Olympic boom, McBride’s business branched out into nursery work.
“They had a trailer on a 64 Acre parcel. Mom was there with a dog we got from the pound and she’d take his phone calls,” McBride’s daughter Leslie Hyche said. “One of the locals at the Village Store, Jack Starrett, said, ‘Why don’t you get some flowers and sell them?’”
During the next few decades the Tahoe Tree Company grew right alongside Tahoe, with McBride providing sod, trees, and native plants to the properties that started popping up all over the lake following the 1960 Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley.
“We ate beans for a few years, but things started getting better,” McBride said.
Looking Ahead
McBride’s daughter Leslie and her husband John Hyche took over operations of the nursery in 1987 and built a two-story wooden lodge in 1990. In 1988, the nursery moved from 64 Acres when the U.S. Forest Service took over the land to its current location up the road. McBride no longer managed operations, but he continued to work. The Hyches discussed downsizing for the last few years before settling recently on the Tahoe Maritime Museum as a buyer for the 10-acre plot of land, but they will operate the nursery until the museum moves onto the property this September.
The Tahoe Maritime Museum will move its entire operation at Homewood into the nursery’s two-story wooden lodge. Leslie and John will keep a small section of the land to continue growing, and will also keep their operations in Loomis, where they grow a portion of their shrubs and perennials to take advantage of its earlier growing season.
“We’re going to lease back a small section of this upper southwest corner,” John Hyche said. “And we’ll have grow areas so Dave can keep growing the natives and the aspens, dogwoods, and willows.”
Regardless of the sale, McBride continues to show up to cultivate his native Tahoe plants almost every day, working on the nursery he started six decades ago.
“I’ll retire with dad,” Leslie said.
