Today is Arbor Day, tree-planting day.  By my lucky break on an airline ticket sale, I’m in Nebraska, where the first Arbor Day was declared in 1872.  We don’t think about the great plains state as a heart of forestry.  According to one account, on the first Arbor Day more than a million trees were planted in Nebraska and a thousand school children marched in the first Arbor Day parade.  Now that was a movement somebody got behind.

The idea for a massive tree planting to establish windbreaks and orchards across this great plains state came from Julius Sterling Morton, a young graduate agriculturalist from the University of Michigan.  Morton, who came to Nebraska in 1854 before it was even organized as a territory, sought to instruct people in newer agricultural methods and forestry. He staked a claim in Nebraska City and planted an orchard.
 
Apparently Morton had what it takes to be successful.  He became the Secretary of Nebraska Territory under President James Buchanan and later Secretary of Agriculture under Grover Cleveland and helped Cleveland set up national forest reservations.  He had good jobs.  But it is his vision for Arbor Day, for which today we individually can appreciate his example.  Seeing a need for windbreaks, he planted trees on the plains.  We need more trees today for reasons which Julius Sterling Morton couldn’t have foreseen.
 
His home in Nebraska City is now a state park, the Arbor Lodge State Historical Park and Arboretum.

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