plant me

Although today is National Arbor Day, it's not Arbor Day where I live. That was on February 16. Two perfectly good (but wasted) opportunities to plant my "rooted from a cutting from one of Pa's cottonwood trees" tree, which is still thriving in a pot.

The first Arbor Day was celebrated in 1872 in Nebraska. It was the brainchild of Julius Sterling Morton (1832-1902), a Nebraska journalist and politician originally from Michigan. Throughout his long and productive career, Morton worked to improve agricultural techniques in his adopted state and throughout the United States when he served as President Grover Cleveland's Secretary of Agriculture. But his most important legacy is Arbor Day.

Morton felt that Nebraska's landscape and economy would benefit from the wide-scale planting of trees. He set an example himself planting orchards, shade trees and wind breaks on his own farm and he urged his neighbours to follow suit. Morton's real opportunity, though, arrived 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. Nebraska's first Arbor Day was an amazing success. More than one million trees were planted. A second Arbor Day took place in 1884 and the young state made it an annual legal holiday in 1885, using April 22nd to coincide with Morton's birthday. [arbor-day.net]

Arbor Day was celebrated in April 1885 in De Smet, with planting of trees on the new graded school grounds. The plan was to have each scholar plant a tree and care for it in the future. Trees do appear in some early school photographs like the one at right, but not in later photos. One has to wonder if Laura and friends planted and tended trees at the school grounds, or if this was a project carried out by the younger school children?

Arbor Day 1905 saw two hundred trees planted at the De Smet Cemetery, thanks to the efforts of Charles Tinkham and Robert Boast.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:22 PM