April
Friday 24 April 2009 photo 2/2
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Arbor Day
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In the 1840s, the midwestern state of Nebraska was a territory within a wide prairie. When pioneers moved out to settle there, they found few trees to build houses or to burn for fuel. There was no shade from the sun or wind, and crops did not grow well in the dry earth.
J. Sterling Morton was one of those pioneers who moved to the treeless Nebraska territory. He and his wife planted trees immediately after moving from their home town of Detroit, Michigan. Morton was a journalist, and later the editor, for Nebraska's first newspaper. In his writings he advocated planting trees to help life on this vast barren plain.
He became the secretary of the Nebraska Territory. At a meeting of the State Board of Agriculture in January 1872, Morton proposed that citizens of the new state of Nebraska set aside April 10 as a day to plant trees. He suggested offering prizes as incentives for communities and organisation that planted the most trees properly. Everyone welcomed the idea enthusiastically. Nebraskans planted about one million trees on that first Arbor Day. Today a visitor to Nebraska would never guess that it was once a dusty prairie.
In 1882, Nebraska declared its own Arbor Day as a legal holiday and the date was changed to Morton's birthday, April 22. Today almost every state celebrates an Arbor day but because the best tree-planting season changes from region to region, some states observe the day on different dates. Hawaiians, for example, plant Arbor Day trees on the first Friday in November!
"Arbor Day which has already transplanted itself to every state in the American Union and has even been adopted in foreign lands... is not like other holidays. Each of those reposes on the past, while Arbor Day proposes for the future."
<p align="right">-J. Sterling Morton
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