Tree Service in Columbia County, WA

Almost every tree on the northern half of this county was put there on purpose. That is not true of many places in Washington, and it changes the whole conversation — the species are ones somebody chose decades ago for speed and shelter, and a lot of those choices are now coming due at the same time.

Wheat Ground Below, the Blue Mountains Above

The north end of the county is loess: wind-laid silt piled deep over Columbia River basalt, cut by the Tucannon and the Touchet and dropping away into the Snake River canyon near Starbuck and Lyons Ferry. Native trees on that ground are limited to the water — black cottonwood, water birch, willow — plus whatever survives on a north-facing basalt break. Everything else in the fields and around the houses was planted and irrigated.

South and east the ground climbs into the Umatilla National Forest: ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, grand fir and western larch, with Rocky Mountain juniper holding the dry breaks. It is the same story as the rest of the interior Northwest. A pine type built around frequent light fire has filled in with a dense fir understory that was never part of the original arrangement, and around the upper Tucannon and Bluewood that understory is the fuel problem.

Dayton Has Old Trees on Old Blocks

The residential streets in Dayton were planted a long time ago and the trees show it. Norway and silver maple, black walnut, catalpa, honeylocust and surviving elm, a good share of them well past the size the planting strip was ever meant to hold, with heavy limbs over roofs and into service drops. Silver maple and elm carry a lot of surface area and shed it under wet snow or a glaze of ice, which this county gets most winters.

None of that makes them removals by default. A mature maple shading a Dayton house is worth keeping if the structure is sound, and reduction pruning or a properly installed cable can buy real years. The trees worth arguing about are the ones with included bark in a main union, a heavy leader over a bedroom, and nothing supporting it.

Shelterbelts Reaching the End of Their Run

The windbreak plantings around farmsteads from Huntsville out toward Marengo and Turner went in generations back, and the species picked for fast establishment are the ones that fail worst. Lombardy poplar comes apart in halves. Siberian elm and black locust sucker from every cut root. Russian olive spreads where nobody wants it. A row that is half dead has stopped working as a windbreak anyway, and taking it out is a clearing job rather than a tree job — several days, a chipper, and a decision about where the wood goes.

Anything living on a well, a ditch or a wheel line is worth watching too. A lot of the standing trees in this county exist because somebody waters them, and when the water arrangement changes the tree finds out before the owner does.

Communities in Columbia County

Dayton and Starbuck hold most of the population; the rest of the county is farm ground, canyon breaks and forest. Start with your town below.