Arbor Day

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150th Arbor Day celebrated Friday in Omaha



"Arbor Day is a special day,” said John Wynn, city forester. “ It's a day when we celebrate. We want this to be a part of what we do all year long. It's a theme, it's part of our culture and our philosophy at not just the parks and recreation department, but as a city and a state.

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Great Outdoors: Celebrating Arbor Day



Great Outdoors: Celebrating Arbor Day

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Black oak tree carved into drum at Arbor Day Farm

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Tree plantings planned in every county to mark the 150th anniversary of Arbor Day

LINCOLN — Travelers set goals to visit every state, bicyclers aspire to ride across the country, and mountaineers seek the highest peaks. But if you’re a tree lover, you plant trees. And to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Arbor Day, the tourism agency in Nebraska City — the home of the tree-planting holiday — is seeking to plant a tree in all 93 counties in Nebraska over the next year. On Monday, Nebraska City Tourism & Commerce joined with officials of the Nemaha Natural Resources District to knock off counties 18, 19 and 20.

Plantings at courthouse, Peru State

A sugar maple went into the ground at the Pawnee County Courthouse, a bald cypress at Peru State College and a catalpa at the Nebraska Extension Office in Syracuse. Arbor Day was first proposed by J. Sterling Morton, the editor of the state’s first newspaper, in January 1872 in addresses to the State Horticultural Society and State Board of Agriculture, according to History Nebraska. It was among many efforts to encourage tree planting across what were then the mostly treeless plains of Nebraska. Other efforts included awarding prizes for the best and largest groves of trees planted. Arbor Day was declared a state holiday in 1885, and it became a national holiday in 1970, at the proclamation of then-President Richard Nixon. Several other countries also have Arbor Days now. April 22 was chosen as the date to plant trees in Nebraska because the weather is ideal at that time and because that is Morton’s birthday. The national observance is the last Friday in April.

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Arbor Day: Celebrating the legacy of Nebraska's homegrown holiday



NEBRASKA CITY, Neb. — Arbor Day in America started 151 years ago, thanks to a Nebraska City man named J. Sterling Morton. Roughly 1,000,000 trees were planted in Nebraska on April 10, 1872, to celebrate the holiday. In 1980, and still today, his hometown continued to celebrate the homegrown holiday when trees are planted and commemorated at Nebraska City’s Arbor Lodge.

They dedicated a special orchard and tree farm to mark Morton’s legacy – one of many monuments to the man that started it all. While J. Sterling Morton is long gone, he pioneered an environmental celebration that refused to follow suit. In one of Morton's notable quotes, he obliquely anticipated its enduring spirit: “Other holidays repose upon the past; Arbor Day proposes for the future.”