‘Crab pot trees are ‘indigenous’ to Down East

Happy 10-year anniversary to the illumination of the “official crab pot Christmas tree,” invented in Down East Carteret County, North Carolina, U.S.A.

It’s a case study in American entrepreneurship…and one of the highest order.

There is just something good and wholesome about seeing local folks cashing in and capitalizing on an authentic culture and heritage that they have embraced for generations. This success story was essentially scripted by proud families who have lived by the seashore and worked as watermen.

Yep, yep, yep. The Santa Claus figure in this yarn is none other than Neal “Nicky” Harvey. He created the first crab pot Christmas tree one day when he was just tinkering in his shop.

Harvey was raised to be a commercial fisherman, and that’s what he did until he reeled it in 1981 for the last time. He started a family business – Harvey & Sons Net and Twine – in the community of Davis. He made the nets that shrimpers used on their trawler vessels.

“When shrimping slumped, he switched to manufacturing traps for the thriving crab business,” wrote Cameron Walker, a contributor to Business North Carolina magazine.

Trapping male blue crabs requires sturdy, but simple wire cubes. The contraptions are known as crab pots.

Writing for Our State magazine, Bill Morris said: “The first metal crab pots were made from plain galvanized chicken wire, but were…quick to rust.” Vinyl-coated wire became the standard, available in assorted colors.

“Green wire has long been the standard color, which could account for the flash of genius that inspired the crab pot Christmas tree,” Morris noted. “Of all the thousands of people who have worked with green-coated crab pot wire, it was Harvey who saw that it could be cut into triangles and made into a tree.”

“We just got the idea to cut some pieces of scrap that we had left over in the shop,” Harvey commented, “and we started putting lights on them. When we got all our crab pot orders filled, we start making trees.”

“The important thing,” he said, “is that we came up with a way to make it fold flat” with the lights still attached, for easy storage.

Some people, however, prefer to display their trees only partially unfolded. They open them halfway to 180 degrees and put them against a wall as “half trees.”

Crab pot trees have other geometric properties. Open only 90 degrees, a tree fits neatly into the corner of an interior room. Outdoors, the trees can be wrapped around the corner of a building (270 degrees) for yet another special effect.

As the crab pot business began to taper off in the early 2000s, Harvey said he realized that in order to survive, he needed to work harder “at getting this tree business going.”

It was just a cottage industry until 2009, when Harvey sold the upstart business to Don Acree. He formed a company known as Fisherman Creations Inc., based in Smyrna, to brand, produce and market crab pot Christmas trees to gobs of customers, both locally and from “Off.”

(Technically, “Off” is the rest of world that is connected both physically and emotionally to Carteret County.)

Acree built a national distribution system through major outlets and established a huge e-commerce presence.

Acree said the company uses American-made “hexagonal wire mesh,” that is both strong and pliable. Reviews from customers rate the trees as “lovely, beautiful, practical and ideal for indoor or outdoor use.”

Part of the reason for the popularity of crab pot trees is their simplicity, Acree says. “There are no dropped needles, no watering, no stringing of lights or struggling with a stand.”

Business spikes every time a down-homey article and pretty pictures of the crab pot trees appear in Our State magazine.

Acree and his team of 15 associates are praising their lucky stars this year. Dagnabbit, they hit the dad-gum jackpot.

A trio of crab pot Christmas trees adorn the cover of Our State’s special 2019 Christmas edition.

They are pretty-pictured at sunset on the end of a dock in Marshallberg, overlooking Sleepy Creek.

Compliments to Editor in Chief Elizabeth Hudson and her staff at Our State. The Down East photo is a great choice to illustrate “A North Carolina Christmas.”