The Defrees family’s forest in Sumpter Valley started as little more than fields of stumps, but a century later they have ponderosa pines so thick you can’t wrap your arms around them.

They also have state and regional awards.

The American Tree Farm System has named Lyle Defrees and his son, Dean, as outstanding tree farmers of the year for the Western region.

That region covers all of the U.S. west of the Mississippi River.

The Defreeses competed against 74,000 tree-farming families.

“We were shocked and pleased and honored,” Dean Defrees said this morning.

The Defreeses were named the top tree farmers in Oregon earlier this year. They were one of two finalists, along with a family in Washington state, for one of four regional awards.

One of those four families will receive the national award later this year.

Dean Defrees said that although his family’s ranch is 109 years old, much of the forested area, which comprises 1,227 acres, was added during the late 1930s and early 1940s by his grandparents, Albert and Ellen Defrees.

That land didn’t much resemble a forest at the time, Dean said.

“All of that ground had been clearcut,” he said. “It’s been a real process getting that back in production.”

The Defrees forest, much of it on Huckleberry Mountain on the south side of Sumpter Valley just west of Phillips Reservoir, was heavily logged during the era when the Sumpter Valley Railroad — the aptly nicknamed Stump Dodger — was plying the previously unlogged forests of the valley and hauling millions of board-feet of timber to mills in Baker City.

Defrees said his family’s goal over the decades was to mimic the forests in place before the clearcutting of the early 20th century.

Today, some of their ponderosa pines — which make up about 80 percent of their forest — are more than 30 inches in diameter.

The forests also include Douglas-firs and tamaracks.

Dean said he and his dad have been able to replicate that previous forest based on photographs and on the recollections of Albert and Ellen Defrees.

Many of the old stumps remain, as well, to show Dean and Lyle how widely the trees were spaced.

See more in the July 15, 2016, issue of the Baker City Herald.