2 weeks Ago By Keith Norman
Arbor Day is April 25 this year. I’m letting you know a little early so you can get your cards in the mail and beat the Arbor Day rush. The event traces its roots back to Nebraska in 1885, when Gov.
Robert W. Furnas set aside a day to promote planting trees on the mostly treeless prairie. According to historians, Nebraskans planted 1 million trees that first year.
ADVERTISEMENT Of local trivia interest, Furnas had been one of the U.S. Army officers at the Battle of Whitestone Hill in 1863 before he got into politics.
Officials here in Stutsman County focused their 1905 Arbor Day activities on planting trees around the rural schools in the area. Back in those days, there would have been at least one, if not more, country schools in each of Stutsman County’s 64 townships. There had been tree-planting efforts at some of the schools in previous years but few had been successful.
“There are only four school houses in the entire county that have artificial trees growing successfully,” wrote The Jamestown Alert in its April 6, 1905, edition. “..
. Canadian Settlement, Windsor, Montpelier and Bartholomew.” I have to admit that I don’t know where the schools and communities known as Canadian Settlement and Bartholomew are located within Stutsman County.
We do have to give those schools credit for getting their trees growing though. “A number of school districts have had trees planted in former years but allowed stock and lack of care to destroy them,” Continued the Alert. ADVERTISEMENT Officials pledged that trees planted in 1905 would be fenced to keep roaming livestock away and cared for, at least during the early years.
The newspaper article also pointed out that there was one Stutsman County school district, located in Homer Township, that was actually surrounded by a “natural grove” of trees. I don’t know how successful the tree planting plans of 1905 were in providing shelter belts of trees around the country schools of the era. It would be nice to think the little scholars of the era had a chance to sit in a little shade in their breaks from the one-room country schools.
Author Keith Norman can be reached at www.KeithNormanBooks.com.
