By PAUL HAMMEL
Nebraska Examiner
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.
Tammy Partsch, tourism coordinator in Nebraska City, said that a million trees were planted in the state on the first Arbor Day in 1872, and planting a tree in every county of the state 150 years later is a way to celebrate the value of trees.
The Nebraska City group is partnering with various natural resources districts across the state in the tree planting endeavor called “The Gift of Trees.”
The Nemaha Natural Resources District, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary, assisted in the tree plantings in southeast Nebraska this week. The Lower Niobrara NRD is partnering in plantings on Friday at county courthouses in Butte and Springview.
Goal is to complete by next fall
Partsch said the goal is to complete the plantings by fall 2023.
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.