Ucross Living Snow Fence Shows Good Growth

Two years ago, in May of 2024, the Ucross Foundation, in a joint effort with the Sheridan County Conservation District, (SCCD), Wyoming Department of Transportation (WYDOT) and the Wyoming State Forestry Division, planted a living snow fence along Highway 14-16 near Ucross.

On June 3, 2024 Sheridan Media ran a story about planting the trees, which were small seedlings at the time. They planted 330 junipers and 240 buffalo berry trees.

Jackie Turner SCCD Program Specialist, helped plant the trees two years ago, and was back at Ucross on September 9 to see how the trees are growing.

She talked about how the snow fence got started.

Highway 14/16 looking from the snow fence to the Ucross Art Gallery.

If a tree in the fence has died, she said the SCCD will replace them during the first three years of growth. After that Ucross will be completely responsible for them. Ucross waters them and they provided sun and wind shades when the trees were smaller.

This fall, many of the juniper trees are between two and four feet tall, and Turner said that the snow fence is doing very well, although some trees were damaged by a hailstorm earlier this summer.

There is another living snow fence that the SCCD planted along I-90 some years ago that now has mature juniper trees to help to block the snow.

Turner added that the Rocky Mountain Juniper are super hardy trees and do real well.

If anyone is interested in putting in a living snow fence, they can contact the SCCD Turner said.

There is more info about the tree program on their website at www.sccdwy.org