At Christmas time, what would one expect of an address named 103 Forrest Place - located on four acres - with a residence named Starseer, which is the historic home of the founder of Moorhead, Chester Pond?
Enchanted, captivated, dazzled, charmed, spellbound?
These words describe what Santa’s elves under the direction and creativity of Jimmy Lloyd have done to transform these four acres into a beautiful, bejeweled Winter Wonderland.
This gift of love has taken four to six weeks of four to six men working eight hour shifts. This is the tenth year that Lloyd painstakingly has designed his gift for all to enjoy.
His inspiration from the first year on is his mother, Mary Elizabeth Lloyd, who loved Christmas with all the lights and glitter. His deceased parents made sure that Christmas was always special for Lloyd and his four brothers.
The beautiful breathtaking celebration of Christmas has sixty-seven fabricated trees made of strings of brilliant LED lights.
These trees range in heights from five feet to forty feet.
There are thirty cool white trees, thirteen multicolor light trees, three red trees, eight green trees, and two blue trees.
New this year are five purple trees and five pink trees to emphasize breast cancer awareness.
Scattered throughout the yard are multiple live trees ranging from eight feet to 60 plus feet which are painstakingly wrapped with thousands of strands of cool white LED lights.
All the branches and trunks are wrapped. Other live trees of assorted heights are wrapped solid red or green.
The eight metal agriculture planes and the two fighter jets which are airborne are brilliant with the planes tightly wrapped with the cool white lights.
To accommodate the planes, the landing strip is outlined with white lights with stripes of red lights at one end of the landing strip and stripes of blue lights at the other end.
The landing strip can accommodate Santa if he decides to fly into town to visit all the good boys and girls. If he comes by sleigh, the pathways are outlined by sections of solid blue, green, red and purple lights.
The large patio and walkway to the residence of Gail Jones Oswalt is outlined by green lights. The roofline of the residence is outlined by purple lights.
Near the residence is a wall solid with purple lights which has two fabricated metal jets wrapped with white lights in memory of Yanky72 which crashed four miles east of Moorhead in July, 2017. This is to honor the fifteen Marines and one Navy Corpsman who perished due to the accident.
In keeping with the true meaning of Christmas, three crosses outlined with cool white lights are scattered throughout the yard. There is also a brilliant white Star of Bethlehem above the trees which is symbolic of the star that led the Wise Men to the Christ child.
Near one of the driveways is a lighted sign Dirt Dobber Farns, Inc. which is Lloyd’s business. Of interest on the sign is a very large dirt dobber (dauber) which is carrying an exaggerated amount of dirt. Adjacent to this sign is a lighted donation box to help defray expenses of the purchase of 200,000 plus lights, huge electricity bill, and cost of labor in setting up the display.
In addition to honoring the memory of Mary Elizabeth Lloyd and the Yanky72 heroes, this year’s display is in memory of a Moorhead icon who recently died—Danny McCraney.
The display is easily found in Moorhead, Turn south on Hwy. 3 off Hwy. 82 and look for the Winter Wonderland lights as you cross the railroad tracks. The lights are on every night through New Year’s Day. Mr. Lloyd says, “Load the kids in the car and come and enjoy the lights. Take pictures or stop long enough to video the display.”
