The Illinois Valley Moon Tree Run - Siskiyou Smoke Jumpers Base

The Illinois Valley's (Oregon) annual Moon Tree Run began twenty years ago as little more than a gleam in Dale O'Keefe's eye. O'Keefe, postmaster in O'Brien, Oregon at the time, enjoyed running and decided the valley needed an event of its own. In 1979 he organized the run at the then fully active Siskiyou Smoke Jumpers Base just south of Cave Junction, Or. Part of the run, even today, follows the course used by the smoke jumpers in their daily training, and is mostly off the road, with a crossing of Rough and Ready Creek. The race was named for a Douglas fir seedling donated to the smoke jumper's base by astronaut Col. Stuart Roosa. The tree was grown from one of the several seeds carried around the moon in 1971 by Col. Roosa who was a former smoke jumper once based in the Illinois Valley. The Forest Service closed the base in 1982 and the original Moon Tree was an unintended casualty. It and a second Moon Tree, planted in 1985 both died. The trees, however, live on in memory and in the race, sponsored for the first eleven years by the Chamber of Commerce and since 1991 by the Illinois Valley Volunteer Firefighters Association. The last Moon Tree Run was in 1999.

The Moon Tree Race home page is at http://web.archive.org/web/20011006040902/www.webtrail.com/moontree/index.html

(archived courtesy of the Internet Archive Wayback Machine - Oct 06, 2001)

Description of Moon Tree Run sent by Jerry Schaeffer

Moon Tree Home Page
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Author/Curator:
Dr. David R. Williams, dave.williams@nasa.gov
NSSDC, Mail Code 690.1
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD 20771
+1-301-286-1258

NASA Official: Ed Grayzeck, edwin.j.grayzeck@nasa.gov
Last Updated: 18 June 2007, DRW