JAMESTOWN, N.D. (NewsDakota.com) – Jamestown needed a little light for 2020. The Jamestown Shriners delivered.
The official lighting of the trees along US Highway 281, formerly known as Mill Hill, was held on Wednesday evening to a small gathering.
“We had been looking at Newman’s trees and Mill Hill had not been done for years,” Shriner Scott Anderson stated. “The trees got to big for the previous group and they didn’t have enough manpower to handle the bigger trees.”
Anderson says this is when a group of members got together and brought it up at a meeting earlier this year.
“We thought it would be a good job for the shriners in Jamestown, we have the largest shrine based group in North Dakota,” Anderson pointed out. “Our four units split the cost to purchase the lights and decorate the trees.”
Now, roughly $30,000 in lights and hours of manpower later, the newly dubbed “Shrine Hill” will be lit up each night through January 2021.
Trees are on timers, so lights will go on around 5 PM each evening and turn off around midnight. Anderson says they’ll leave the lights on the trees once the holidays pass.
“Taking down the lights every year can actually cause more damage to the lights, so we’re gonna leave them up there. We’ll monitor for any maintenance through the year,” Anderson pointed out.
And that’s not the last bit of Shriner magic the group plans to add.
“We’re going to bring a giant Fez to the top of the Hill near Lloyds Toyota,” Anderson teased. “It’ll be another addition to Shriner Hill for the holidays.”
