FIFTY YEARS OF ARBOR DAYS 



CAN your town look ahead fifty years ? What if a row 

 of trees had been planted for you when you were 

 born? \\'hat would they be like now ? Supposing your 

 town fifty years ago had started a town forest as is 

 being done by so many places today. That forest would 

 be a regular source of income now. Many towns of 

 Europe do this and have done so for centuries. Take 

 town beautification plans for example. Suppose they 

 had been started fifty years ago? Would not their 

 streets be attractive with trees and parkways? 



The point to this is that the year 1922 is the semi- 

 centennial of the founding of Arbor Day m this country. 

 In the state of Nebraska the first Arbor Day was inau- 

 gurated by the State Board of Agriculture on January 

 4, 1872, when a resolution by J. Sterling Morton setting 



ciation show J. Sterling Morton to have been long iden- 

 tified with the organization. His son, Joy Morton, of 

 Chicago, is also interested in trees and recently gave a 

 four-hundred acre estate west of that city for an arbore- 

 tum. 



Some of the pioneers mentioned in the call by the 

 Anierican Forestry Association to schools, women's 

 clubs, civic societies, chambers of commerce and 

 patriotic organizations to mark the anniversary are Mor- 

 ton, Fernow, Rothrock, Loring, Roth, Trelease, Higley, 

 Northrup, Henry S. Drinker, Charles Sprague Sargent 

 and a host of others. These men preached forestry when 

 to be a "tree enthusiast" was to be a "crank." They were 

 in the same category with those persons who worked 

 for women's sufTrage, prohibition, believed in flying ma- 



AMERICAN LEGION TREE PLANTING IN CHICAGO 



John J Little Jr commander of the Theodore Roosevelt Post, American Legion, holding the first of two hundred memorial 



trees planted at the entrance to the Speedway Hospital. Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis shoveling m the earth. 



"Wednesday, the tenth of April, 1872 for tree planting in 

 the state of Nebraska" was adopted. In that year more 

 than a million trees were planted in what was known as 

 the "treeless state." In 1885 the state legislature changed 

 the date to April 22 in honor of Mr. Morton's birthday. 

 This year is also the semi-centennial of the establish- 

 ing of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard and the for- 

 tieth anniversary of the organization of the American 

 Forestry Association for in 1882 the Association was 

 started at Cincinnati with George E. Lormg, of Salem, 

 Massachusetts, as first president. The files of the Asso- 



chines and jokingly referred to automobiles as "horse- 

 less carriages." To get a perspective on how long ago 

 it was when we had the first Arbor Day we must re- 

 member that it was four years before the centennial at 

 Philadelphia, where the telephone was a "contraption." 

 a sort of side show proposition. 



In Nebraska the people have planted seven hundred 

 thousand acres and as long ago as 1895 the legislature 

 of that state proudly proclaimed by resolution that Ne- 

 braska shall henceforth be known as "The Tree Planter's 

 State." Following the lead of Nebraska, Tennessee and 



