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Looking for something different for the family this Christmas?  Crowell’s Land of Christmas in Sandpoint is for you.  This family-owned farm offers over 40,000 Christmas trees, in 7 varieties and heights for any ceiling.  Up to 24 feet, in fact!

          Friends come from all over the area to the Crowell farm to stroll through acres and acres of trees, searching for that “perfect” tree.  Each family is given a special red measuring stick to be sure their tree is “just right.”  (Trees seem to “grow” when you get them home.)  Christmas carols can be heard in the background, and there is usually plenty of hot chocolate to make the time even more enjoyable.  Weather permitting, the hay wagon and tractor help to bring your tree and family back to the main farmhouse.

          Raising Christmas trees was the brainchild of Dwight Crowell,  Sandpoint native.  Dwight was born on the farm in 1919 to proud parents Jennie and Randolf Crowell, who purchased the 40 acre farm in 1913.  Back in those days, the farm was only a farm of stumps, having been logged by Humbird Lumber Company just a few years prior.  The logs that would float had been  dragged over the hill and dumped into the Pend Oreille River to float to the lumber mill in Dover, a few miles away.  The logs that would not float were left on the farm, and used by the Crowells for years as firewood.  Stumps were blown with dynamite, and pulled out by “Dollie” and “Jim” the family’s horses.

Randolf  was a horticulturist of sorts, and had fruit orchards on the farm, as well as raising strawberries.  Dwight, and avid reader, decided to plant about an acre of trees to see if there would be a market for them after the five or six years it would take them to mature.  He was one of the earliest Christmas Tree growers in the Inland Empire.  In those days the farm was called “Crowell’s Christmas Conifers.”

          Although Dwight and wife Margaret had only planned on doing wholesale tree sales, the neighbors and friends began banging on the front door after Thanksgiving to ask to buyone of these hand-pruned beauties.  Dwight loved to discuss not only his trees, but also everything else that might come up,  so the visits were not only long sometimes, but also interesting for all involved.  Dwight and Margaret ran the farm until the early 1990’s.

          Crowell’s third son Crandon returned to the farm in 1991.  Apparently the years invested in working on the farm as a kid had not sucedded in scaring him away .  Crandon was blessed to purchase a home that Dwight and Margaret had build just after World War II.  It had been sold in the early 60’s, but was available again, after all those years.  

          The name was changed in 1994 to its current “Land of Christmas” with the addition of weekend hay rides, free-standing reindeer and other “props.”  By tripling the number of employees, and offering great customer service, the retail aspect of the Land of Christmas has multiplied the tree  retail business to about 5 times its former level.  Customers come from as far away as Coeur d ‘Alene and Spokane, WA for their tree now.  It has become a family tradition for many folks, as they can even have the tree “’wrapped” in the wrapping machine to aid not only in transportation, but especially when the tree is brought in the house and set in the stand. Crandon and wife Ramona run the business now, and invite you to come to the farm for a wonderful family experience. 

          The Land of Christmas has been the supplier of the Kootenai Medical Center’s Festival of Trees for over 10 years now, and can offer you the same quality of “gourmet trees” they have been providing since the inception of the Festival.