A 60-foot blue spruce tree arrived in downtown Stillwater this week — just in time for the annual Hometown for the Holidays’ Twinkle Party and tree lighting on Saturday.

The 6,800-pound tree, a gift to the city from Aamodt’s Apple Farm in Grant, now stands in Chestnut Street Plaza.

Owner Chris Aamodt said the tree, which was originally 68 feet tall, was planted by his paternal grandfather, Thor Aamodt, sometime in the 1960s. Thor and his wife, Lucille, started Aamodt’s Apple Farm in 1948 after Thor Aamodt retired from his job as a professor of horticulture and entomology at the University of Minnesota-St. Paul campus.

“The orchard was his retirement project,” Chris Aamodt said. “I literally remember being there when he planted it. My dad (Tom Aamodt) told him that it was too close to th

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