Workers replant fallen Highway 395 trees

It started in mid-October when a tree-napping report came out over the police scanner.

It turned out to be landscapers replacing one of the little pine trees planted along Highway 395.

On Wednesday, workers were back out replanting trees that had gone over during Thanksgiving week.

While some of the trees have gone down over the four years since they were planted in 2012, wet conditions and high winds have started playing havoc with them.

On the day after Thanksgiving, eight of the little pines between Genoa and Muller lanes were on their sides.

They were among 100 trees planted by the Carson Valley Reforestation and Beautification Foundation in 2012.

Attorney Nancy Rey Jackson said the reforestation foundation has been paying to replant the trees.

“That’s the third time,” she said. “The winds have been just killing them. Dink Getty went out and put everything back up. We may still lose a couple if we have more winds.”

Jackson said the foundation has had enough support to keep the trees watered.

“Our goal is to keep them alive, but we may have to give up on some of them,” she said. “We’re trying as hard as we can. We changed the stakes to metal, dug new holes and put in new dirt.”

With a drip system, most of the trees are surviving well, but the pines’ roots aren’t deep enough to withstand the raging winds that come across the Valley.

The effort was designed to recover the highway’s former charm when it was lined with cottonwoods in the early 1980s.

Those trees were taken down when the Nevada Department of Transportation widened 395 in 1985.

Coldwell Banker Itildo’s Marsha Tomerlin started the tree project in the early 90s along 3 1/2 miles on the west side of the highway.

Some of the trees closer to town are survivors of that effort.

With the state’s long-range plan to widen 395 to six lanes and make it a limited access highway, the trees could eventually come down again.