Conservation: Trees for St. James

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Ten years ago, St. James, Mo., looked like a town that was out to win the grand prize for uglification. Long distinguished by its handsome trees, the town of 3,000 inhabitants, which nestles in the Ozark foothills, had called in bulldozers and chain-saw gangs to systematically destroy nearly every one of its existing trees.

In fact, the carnage was only the first step in a plan to make St. James more beautiful than ever. Most of the trees cut down were soft maples—shortlived, brittle and prone to wind and ice damage. Many of them were already diseased and dying. Using $500,000 from the James Foundation, which was established in 1938 by the will of Lucy Wortham James, great-granddaughter of pioneering Missouri Ironmaker Thomas James, the town decided to tear out the old trees and begin replacing them with hardier fast-growing holly, sweet gum and flowering crab.

At first the new trees had to be imported from nurseries as far away as the Atlantic seaboard. Finally the town established a local "tree bank" that now covers 50 acres. On the tenth anniversary of the coming of the bulldozers, St. James can boast today that it has planted some 27,000 new trees—roughly nine for each of its inhabitants—and now qualifies as one of the most densely and handsomely wooded towns in the nation.