(Photos courtesy of Washington State Archives)

The folks in the other Washington are getting ready to decorate the National Mall for the holidays, and a key part of the decorations is appropriately coming from The Evergreen State.

The 2013 U.S. Capitol Christmas tree was harvested during a tree-cutting ceremony in the Colville National Forest in Usk last Friday. Secretary of State Kim Wyman was on hand for the festivities.

This year’s tree is an 88-foot-tall Engelmann spruce. The tree will tour our state and then head south and east to Washington, D.C., where it will be decorated and lit on the National Mall.

This is the first time a tree from Eastern Washington will decorate the grand lawn in front of the Capitol. The last U.S. Capitol Christmas tree from Washington state was a Pacific silver fir in 2006, cut from the Olympic National Forest.

News of this annual event prompted our State Archives staff to unearth classic photos showing a similar event over 50 years ago.

The top photo shows a crane lowering the 1961 National Christmas Tree, a 75-foot Douglas fir, onto a Weyerhaeuser truck on the Clemons Tree Farm near Montesano. The bottom photo shows the train carrying the National Christmas Tree.

The photos come from the Archives’ State Governors’ Negative Collection, 1949-1975.