Aspen Alley in the Sierra Madre Mountains of southern Wyoming isn’t what it once was. And in 2025, it looks worse than ever.
Dennis Faerber, owner of the Aspen Alley Ranch, is fully aware that the iconic grove of aspen trees lining the road, one of the most beautiful autumn spots in Wyoming, is barely a shadow of its former glory.
That’s why he’s spent the last few months taking down and grinding up dozens of the iconic aspens, spreading the remains of the towering trees over the ground where they once stood.
It seems counterintuitive — even sacrilegious — but it’s part of a long-term plan implemented by multiple agencies to revitalize Aspen Alley, a stretch of dirt Forest Road 801 off the Battle Pass Scenic Byway. Things have to “get worse” before they get better than ever, he said.
“This was really the best and only option to regenerate Aspen Alley,” Faerber told Cowboy State Daily. “We full well recognize how important this is to people, not just here in the North Platte River Valley and in the Little Snake River Valley, and we're really trying to do this for the people of Wyoming.”
Diseased And Dying
Faerber bought the Aspen Alley Ranch, a 520-acre inholding within Medicine Bow National Forest, five years ago. By that point, people were already saying the famous lane had lost its luster, and Faerber quickly saw why.
“Half of the trees were already dead, and probably another 25% were dying,” he said. “Many had been carved on and were infected. It wasn’t what it used to be.”
Within a year of acquiring the ranch, Faerber asked the U.S. Forest Service to do an assessment of the aspen grove and conifer forest on the property. Their recommendation to ensure the forest’s future growth was to remove a significant portion of the existing trees.
“Our conclusion was that we needed to do selective cutting in the conifer forest to reduce the risk of a fire, which we felt was inevitable,” Faerber said. “We had lots of beetle kill and fuel on the ground, so I started working with the Forest Service on conifer fuel reduction.”
As for the aspens, the consensus was that Aspen Alley had reached the end of its natural lifespan. Faerber wasn’t surprised to hear it.
Faerber, working with the U.S. Forest Service, the Wyoming State Forestry Division, and the Mule Deer Foundation, started the assessment and planning in the first year and began the first phase of “the conifer project,” which involved removing dead trees and ground fuel in the second year while working on funding and coordination for future work.
This summer, Faerber did what many would consider unthinkable.
Between June and August, several of the towering aspens alongside Aspen Alley were taken down.
There’s no need to worry, he said. It’s a short-term loss in the name of long-term progress.
“This is the best, and perhaps the only, way of bringing Aspen Alley back to its former glory,” Faerber said.
Healthier Habitat
Nicole Reed remembers visiting Aspen Alley as a kid. When she returned to the property, she could tell that the years had taken their toll.
“It is definitely not the Aspen Alley that it used to be,” she said. “I grew up in Carbon County, so I can attest to that.”
Reed is now the director of conservation operations for the Mule Deer Foundation. She got involved with the rejuvenation of Aspen Alley because it’s a strategically important habitat for Wyoming’s wildlife.
“That area is right on the edge of the Baggs migration corridor for mule deer,” she said. “Deer and elk are seen there all the time. The Mule Deer Foundation wanted to treat the aspen stand that's there to try to bring back the habitat and make it better for mule deer.”
By addressing the dead and dying aspens, Reed said Aspen Alley could be restored to a more beneficial habitat for wildlife. Clearing the forest would open the forest floor for the plants that mule deer and other animals prefer in these environments.
“Our goal was to bring back the most nutritious plants to Aspen Alley,” she said. “If you clear out the dead aspen and some of the juniper growing on the forest floor, you get more sunshine in there. Then all you'll see would be more grasses, more forbs, and those aspen trees.”
That specific assemblage of undergrowth is a parade for mule deer. It’s the habitat where they prefer to fawn in the spring, seek forage in the fall, and survive in winter.
That’s why the Mule Deer Foundation partnered with Faerber and the U.S. Forest Service to rejuvenate the aspen grove and conifer forest on the Aspen Alley Ranch.
Chewed Up And Hulked Out
The best way to revitalize Aspen Alley was to tear down the dead trees, grind them up, and scatter the remains throughout the aspen grove. It’s a process called mastication.
“It’s a lot like tree chipping,” Reed said. “We toppled over dead trees and masticate them on the ground, which leaves larger chips on the forest floor. That helps reduce the fuel in the area, which reduces the risk for wildfire, but also helps keep the energy in the system.”
Mastication is especially beneficial for aspens because they grow as clonal colonies. Aspen groves aren’t a collection of individual trees growing together, but a series of stems sharing the same root system that’s growing from a single seed.
Most trees don’t like it when their roots are disturbed. According to Reed, disturbing an aspen grove “makes them mad,” and the clones respond like the Incredible Hulk.
“Aspen roots love disturbance,” she said, “Mastication disturbs and cuts into the root system, so it starts to shoot up more aspen sprouts.”
Heavy machinery was used to topple trees and grind them into chips through the aspen grove at Aspen Alley. They caused a lot of beneficial disturbance that will facilitate healthy growth in the future, as has been demonstrated in other aspen groves.
Faerber was entirely in favor of extensive mastication at Aspen Alley, even if it meant removing several of the beloved aspens that dozens of photographers have captured over the years. He understands that the dismemberment of the dead trees today will foster the growth of new, healthy trees tomorrow.
“We kept the trees that were healthy and masticated the sick and dying trees into the soil,” he said. “That creates a base that’s like a mulch. It holds the moisture in the ground and radically accelerates new growth.”
Better Than Doing Nothing
Mastication not only keeps the energy of the old aspen grove by spreading it over the ground. According to Reed, it also helps the clonal root system rejuvenate itself through new growth, where it would otherwise focus on maintaining existing growth, regardless of its vitality and health.
“It essentially takes all the energy that it was trying to put into those dead or dying trees and puts it into new trees,” she said. “You can actually see new trees growing from the cuts from mastication.”
People might argue that Mother Nature should be allowed to take its course, and that toppling trees at Aspen Alley is overly destructive. Faerber and Reed respect that conservation-oriented mindset while recognizing it could have led to the total demise of Aspen Alley.
“There were a lot of diseased trees in that grove,” she said. “If too much disease spreads into that root system, we could actually see a clone completely die off, rather than regenerating. We would have seen all those trees starting to die off pretty quickly.”
Furthermore, the average lifespan of an aspen tree is between 80 and 100 years. Many trees at Aspen Alley were showing their age, and the energy being spent to maintain dying and diseased trees was better allocated toward the future.
“These trees were at the end of their life,” Faerber said. “There are people who are upset that Aspen Alley is not what it was, and I fully understand, but that's just a fact of nature. We believe this was the only realistic path to bring it back.”
Enormous Effort And Expense Paying Off
Aspen Alley doesn’t look great at the moment. Much of the surrounding forest has been cleared out, and the formerly dense forest of aspen trees and lodgepole pines now looks like a naked clear-cut exposure.
Nevertheless, there’s still an allure to Aspen Alley. Faerber is still fielding requests from families and photographers looking for an aspen backdrop for their photo shoots.
“People are still coming for wedding shoots or high school graduation pictures,” he said. “I've directed them to other places on the ranch that are more photogenic than Aspen Alley is right now.”
Rejuvenating Aspen Alley has been “an enormous effort and expense” for Faerber. Still, he has complete confidence in Reed, the U.S. Forest Service, and other people and agencies that helped him develop and implement the plan for the property.
“I think by next year, after a winter snowpack, we're going to see aspen shoots popping up everywhere,” he said. “In fact, there are already shoots sprouting where they did some masticating last year. We’re going to see the aspen forest come in very thick, very quickly.”
Reed visited the Aspen Alley Ranch on Friday. She found several aspen shoots already poking through the chip-covered ground.
“We did the mastication project about a month ago, and we're already starting to see aspen saplings coming up in that spot,” she said. “They're pretty small right now, but they're already growing. We expect the area to recover very nicely from this treatment.”
Throwing Shade Sooner Than Later
How long before Aspen Alley returns to its former glory? It’ll take some time, but not as much as people might be mourning.
Aspen Alley reached the heights of its former grandeur after 80 years of growth. Reed is confident that future generations will savor the fruits of their labor, but current generations won’t miss out, either.
“I would anticipate four to five-foot-tall trees within the next year,” she said. “They'll only mature more over the next couple of years, and we’ll see the larger, mature trees that everybody loves within the next 15 to 20 years.”
The understory benefits will be more immediate. With more sunlight hitting the ground, mule deer will have an abundance of grass and forbs waiting for them as soon as next spring.
Faerber sees the rejuvenation of Aspen Alley as a gift to the future of Wyoming. The iconic, aspen-lined lane has seen better days, and it will see much better days in the years to come.
“We view ourselves as the stewards of Aspen Alley,” he said. “We're blessed to have it, and we'll try and do the absolute best we can for the community, the forest, and the wildlife for as long as we have it.”
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
