Crowds of people flock to a tiny Massachusetts town to send a Rockefeller Christmas tree to New York.

WEST STOCKBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — This year’s Rockefeller Center Christmas tree has a strong New England accent and locals are very excited.

The Norway spruce that will be going to New York is from West Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It was scheduled to shorten Thursday and make the roughly 140-mile (225-kilometer) journey south, arriving in midtown Manhattan on Nov. 9.

The Christmas tree will be lit during a live television broadcast on December 4 with 50,000 colorful lights with a Swarovski star on top. The tree will remain lit until mid-January.

Locals this week flocked to the tree, which was planted 67 years ago in honor of the homeowner’s nieces, and high on the 11-tonne (9.97 metric ton) tree several workers could be seen tying its branches together for the trip. down south.

This is the first Rockefeller Center Christmas tree to come from Massachusetts since 1959.

“A lot of people come to the city interested in this. So people come to the house and take pictures and get excited about it,” said Bernie Fallon, a resident of West Stockbridge, a town of 1,400 people in western Massachusetts. “Town talk, local gossip and talk are pretty high.”

Peter Giles Thorne, another resident, called it a “wonderful story.”

“Having a tree in your hometown does some good,” he said with a laugh.

Among the Christmas tree visitors were Michael and Tanya Hardinger, tourists from Denmark. They flew to New York and drove to Massachusetts, a trip that took longer than expected after Michael Hardinger took the wrong route.

“We call it the scenic route. So it took six hours instead of 2.5 hours,” Michael Hardinger said. “But we found it and found the tree. And we are very happy.”

Hardinger said the trip was inspired by their love of Christmas: the family had two and sometimes three Christmas trees in their home in Copenhagen. Both musicians will return to Denmark to play a few shows and then return to New York to do some Christmas shopping and visit the tree again, this time in Rockefeller Center.

“We love Christmas and the Rockefeller tree is something we have to see every year,” Hardinger said. “It’s so beautiful and it’s fantastic. So to see him here alive before he was killed is exciting and a lot of fun.”