Many states are celebrating Arbor Day today, the last Friday of April. All 50 states celebrate Arbor Day although the dates may vary in keeping with the local climate. The first Arbor Day took place on April 10, 1872 in Nebraska. It was the brainchild of Julius Sterling Morton, a Nebraska journalist and politician originally from Michigan.
Morton felt that Nebraska’s landscape would benefit from the wide-scale planting of trees for wind breaks. When he became a member of Nebraska’s state board of agriculture, he proposed that a special day be set aside dedicated to tree planting and increasing awareness of the importance of trees. More than one million trees were planted on Nebraska’s first Arbor Day.
I’m glad my squirrels forget where they bury all their acorns so they plant new oak trees for me as most of my old oaks are getting hollow and blowing down.
Old Oak Tree
What a wonderful man, to start Arbor Day.