History of Arbor Day Page
A
bit of history about Arbor Day
Hawai'i celebrates Arbor Day on the first Friday of November. While across the country most states celebrate Arbor Day in April, Hawaii's rainy season begins in November and plants have a better chance of surviving with a little help from nature.
The history of Arbor Day is interesting. The father of Arbor Day was Julius Sterling Morton of Nebraska. In 1872 he introduced a resolution to the Nebraska State Board of Agriculture to celebrate trees, which became known as Arbor Day. He said, "...let us endeavor then by our words on Arbor Day - and all other opportune occasions - to so embellish the world with plant life, trees, flowers and foliage, as to make our earth homes approximate to those which the prophets, poets and seers of all ages have portrayed as the Home in Heaven. Each generation takes the Earth as trustees. We ought to bequeath to posterity as many forests and orchards as we have exhausted and consumed."
President Theodore Roosevelt in his Arbor Day Proclamation to the School Children of the United States in 1907 said, "It is well that you should celebrate your Arbor Day thoughtfully, for within your lifetime the Nation's need of trees will become serious." A people without children would face a hopeless future; a country without trees is almost as hopeless; forests which are so used that they can not renew themselves will soon vanish, and with them all their benefits. A true forest is not merely a storehouse full of wood, but, as it were, a factory of wood and at the same time a reservoir of water. To exist as a nation, to prosper as a state, and to live as people, we must have trees."
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